Nobody move or the puppy gets it!

From ITV.com:

It's a grim time in the fun business. In Southend-on-Sea, the owner of Sealife says he may have to euthanise animals in his "zooquarium" because the annual cost of electricity has tripled from £240,000 to three quarters of a million pounds.

Philip Miller says keeping animals including monkeys, meerkats and tropical fish through the winter would be too costly, if the attraction was closed to save money.

"All these animals have to keep warm - or cold - or a combination of both*, and it's on 24/7, seven days a week. And they have to be fed, so it's a massive bill to maintain. They'll all have to euthanised or we find other homes but all the other zoos are going to be in the same boat, I'd imagine," Mr Miller said.

* I'm not sure what a "combination of being kept warm and cold" is in practice, but I hope he can sort something out.

Zoo animals: fighting back

From Cincinnati.com, last month:

A holiday weekend outing at Cincinnati's zoo turned doubly tragic Saturday when a 3-year-old boy was hospitalized after falling into a gorilla enclosure - and zoo workers had to kill the rare gorilla to protect the boy.

This month:

From NY Times:

A woman was killed by a tiger over the weekend after jumping out of a car in a Beijing animal park to try to save her daughter [who had foolishly got out of the car] from a tiger attack, local government officials said.

From The Evening Standard:

A seven-year-old girl has tragically died after she was struck by rock which was hurled by an elephant at a zoo in Morocco. The youngster was posing for a picture outside the animal’s enclosure when she was hit by the large rock in Rabat.

Not strictly speaking zoo animals but included for completeness:

From The Daily Mail:

A man from Valencia has died after being gored by a heifer in a bull-run near the southern Spanish town of Alicante.

The deadly incident occurred about 1 a.m. Saturday during late-night festivities in the small village of Pedreguera. The Red Cross says the heifer gored the 29-year-old man through the chest and stomach.

(What a heifer was doing at a bull run is not explained).

Also from The Daily Mail:

The wife of a top bullfighter looked on in horror as her husband was gored to death during a festival in eastern Spain. Victor Barrio, 29, from Segovia was fighting in Teruel, Aragon in eastern Spain when the bull speared him through the chest.

And a happy ending help calm our jangling nerves:

From The Daily Mail:

Clearly this tiny baby was just the snack this hungry polar bear was after. In an amazing video a bear can be seen instinctively attacking a baby in a Missouri zoo - but mercifully the tot is on the other side of the glass.

This is all getting a bit out of hand, I preferred the good old days when we just had cow attacks, that's a fair fight at least.

Gorilla warfare

From The Local:

A gorilla opened a gash in a Swedish woman's forehead after throwing rocks at her at a Swedish zoo on Saturday.

The woman, 38, was hit in the forehead by the stone, which was thrown by one of the five gorillas at the Kolmården National Park in central Sweden. The stone measured roughly five centimetres in diameter, said Marjorie Castro, head of the zoo...

However, following the news of the stone-throwing gorilla, other Swedes shared similar stories about their experiences with the Kolmården primates. The mother of a 7-year-old boy told Aftonbladet that Enzo the gorilla had thrown a stone at her son in July last year.

"I got so scared and was thinking 'Please, don't throw rocks," the boy told the paper. "They are scary."

Kolmården made headlines in June last year when the zoo's wolf pack mauled and killed a female employee.

"Chimpanzee 'makes human gesture' at young visitor: Zoo at centre of intelligent design storm launches probe into apparent heresy"

From The Daily Mail

Regent's Park zoo launched an investigation today after a chimpanzee was pictured apparently making a 'human' gesture at a young visitor during a school trip yesterday.

The simian clearly raises its hands up under its armpits to apparently imitate a racist football fan while appearing to chant unintelligibly - yet menacingly - at local pupil Danny Welbeck.

The gesture threatens to re-ignite an ongoing row that has engulfed the zoologist community in recent years after the majority turned their backs on the theory of evolution, seeking to explain away the striking similarities between the behaviour of large apes and of human beings with the concept of 'intelligent design'.

A spokesman said: "London Zoo can confirm we are investigating an incident involving alleged human-like behaviour by one of the chimp's at yesterday's visit by St Custard's Junior School. We will be examining all available footage and ask anyone who can identify the monkey to contact us.

"London Zoo is committed to suppressing all evidence of ape-human similarities and if we have sufficient evidence we will take the strongest possible action, including chopping its head off and feeding it to the rival group in the next cage."

"If they teach this skill to the cows, we’re doomed."

... says JuliaM, who spotted this story in the Daily Mail:

Elephant in stealth attack on keeper

From The Daily Mail:

Anne Baker, the zoo's director, said it's not clear why Louie, turned on the keeper. The elephant and Mr Redfox had been together nearly every day since the animal's birth seven years ago. It looks as if Louie was startled and then started play-fighting, as elephants do in the wild, Ms Baker said.

Mr Redfox makes it a habit to talk to the animals before he approaches so he doesn't surprise them, Ms Baker said. She thinks he didn't do it this time because he didn't know Louie was around the corner when he walked into the enclosure carrying a bag of carrots...

UPDATE: I've now watched the video, there was no "corner" involved, the elephant was in full view at all times, and there's a funny jump at 47 seconds in:

Michael "Snitch" Gove

More discussion on Gove's dress sense here.