Walking around a zoo is a great way to learn more about wild animals you'd never usually see in-person, as well as their native environments.
Yet nearly every single one of us has, at one point or another, wondered what would happen if an animal resident got out of its enclosure. Being at the zoo is kind of like being on a plane - you don't want to think of an emergency occurring, but you'd like to have some idea of your exit points in case it does.
The seemingly-unlikely occurrence of an animal escaping does actually happen though. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it causes widespread panic in concern for both the escapee and the welfare of people in the area.
Belfast Zoo has been subject to a number of escapes through the years. For the most part, these were minor incidents in which small animals didn't get very far from their enclosures and were recaptured unharmed.
Yet some escapees tragically died in their bid for freedom, and others were alarming enough to spark calls for a major security review.
Belfast City Council, which oversees the zoo, previously told Belfast Live it investigated every escape and death from 2010-2019 and did not find fault in any of the reported incidents.
Take a look back at some of the most dramatic escape headlines that have surrounded Belfast Zoo over the years.
Polarised
A 2019 episode of Derry Girls prompted some confusion about a popular resident of Ulster Museum.
In the third episode of season two, the girls' parents stop them heading to see Take That in Belfast amid reports that a polar bear has escaped from Belfast Zoo. The episode ends with the polar bear being discovered eating sheep on a road the girls had travelled.
The episode had some viewers wondering whether this was the story of Peter the polar bear, or whether a separate polar bear had escaped the zoo at the time the show is set - the '90s.
The answer is neither, as the plot was a fictional storyline inspired by the real Peter incident, which took place in the ‘70s.
Peter was a polar bear bought by Belfast Zoo from Dublin Zoo in 1960. In 1972, he died at the age of 30, and the zoo gave his body to the Ulster Museum (where he still resides today).
Yet before he could be displayed, he had to be preserved. In the hours between his time of death and the time the taxidermist would see him, he became the centre of an escape scare and made international headlines.
The task of transporting a dead exotic animal weighing over 360kg was unusual enough, but it was further complicated by the Troubles. When stopping the vehicle at a checkpoint, security forces were scared by sounds and movements coming from the body.
So too was the case for the museum’s nightwatchman as he was alone with the bear hours later. After witnessing stirrings beneath the sheet, he called the police in a panic, convinced Peter was actually alive.
What the men had really witnessed was the beginning of the decomposition of the body. The noises they heard were the release of natural gases and the movements they saw were due to Peter’s limbs stiffening in the onset of rigor mortis.
So there you are. Belfast Zoo never had a polar bear escape, but it did have a polar bear escape scare.
Family feuds
In 2005, a colobus monkey named Mojo escaped his enclosure at Belfast Zoo. What made his great escape so dramatic?
Well, it’s nowhere near as dramatic as Peter’s story - none of them are.
Still, he did a runner by scaling a chain-link fence after fighting with his dad. He was reported to have evaded capture for a week and was later transported to another facility as hopes for a father-son reconciliation were low.
Families, eh? Even in primates, there's trouble.
A prairie dog similarly escaped in 2008 after being expelled by the other animals in its group. Harsh.
Phoebe's stand-off
A few months after Mojo's disappearing act, a chimpanzee named Phoebe got out of her enclosure by using broken tree branches to scale the fence.
She failed to make it out of the zoo and was recaptured after police fired warning shots into the air.
Live wires
In 2013, six lion-tailed macaques stunned staff after escaping the zoo by scaling a fence... a live, electric fence.
Investigators decided that "something had spooked them enough to provide the stimulus to climb the electric fence which was live".
They all made it back to the zoo safely on different dates between October and November of that year. Funnily enough, some were recaptured, but others just came home of their own accord.
Amber alert
One red panda started 2019 with a bang when she disappeared from the zoo in late January. The animal, named Amber, got out after a power fault in the electric fence surrounding her enclosure.
She was recaptured alive in a residential area the following day when a man found her in his driveway.
Copycat chimp
Just a few weeks later in February 2019, another Belfast Zoo resident escaped. This time, a chimpanzee scared the life out of visitors as it casually wandered around the zoo before being returned to its enclosure by staff.
A Belfast City Council spokeswoman said at the time that the animal had escaped using the same broken tree branch method Phoebe used in 2005.
Road deaths
Two Belfast Zoo escapees were sadly killed on the road whilst venturing around unfamiliar territory.
One was a ring-tailed lemur found on Hightown Road in 2008. Oscar the spider monkey also died after being hit by a car on the M2 in 2018.
Which of these escapes do you remember? Let us know in the comments below.
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