Animals on the Lips: Welfare Group Documents Exotic Animal Escapes and Attacks

OTTAWA — Many Canadians have heard of Darwin, the Ikea monkey, who was found roaming a garage at the furniture chain’s North York store wearing a shearling coat and a diaper.

Many were equally fascinated and horrified last December after a kangaroo named Nathan escaped while being transported between zoos and ended up in Oshawa, Ont., in frigid winter temperatures.

But did you hear about the alligator that escaped from a truck in Montreal and went for a walk at a nearby cafe? Or the tiger that got tired of his pen at a zoo in eastern Ontario and was found trotting along a nearby highway?

In an effort to draw attention to the dangerous and ongoing problem of keeping exotic wild animals in captivity, either in zoos or as pets, World Animal Protection Canada is building a new database and interactive online map to document all the events it can find.

So far, he has documented more than 200 exotic animal escapes, attacks and disease outbreaks in Canada over the past 40 years. This is just the first run. I find more to add all the time.

The database shows an average of 12 incidents per year over the past decade.

Michèle Hamers, wildlife campaign manager for World Animal Protection Canada, said she regularly encounters incidents of wild animal escapes and attacks.

“I’ve noticed that when it’s reported, it’s either a cute story, like it’s funny,” she said. “You know, the kangaroo got away, ha ha, without thinking about the animal welfare implications or anything like that.”

She said it is often reported “as a one-off event” that doesn’t happen often.

“Which is absolutely not the case,” she said.

Hamers said the hope is that the database will spark outrage and compel people to demand more comprehensive laws to protect animals and people.

Escapes or attacks involve animals kept as pets, as well as those kept in zoos, including highly regarded ones like the Toronto Zoo and smaller operations, commonly referred to as roadside zoos.

Sometimes the escapes horrify strangers, like the man in Scarborough, Ontario, who in 2018 went to pick up his phone from the floor in the middle of the night, only to discover a ball python wrapped around the charging cable.

The snake escaped from a neighboring apartment through the walls.

Or the 11-year-old Hamilton girl who got out of her backyard pool and saw a 5-foot-long alligator near her house. She thought it was a pool toy until it moved.

Police said it likely escaped from a nearby home where it was kept as a pet.

Ball pythons are legal pets in Toronto. Alligators are not legal in Hamilton.

While many provinces have limitations on what animals are allowed, Ontario does not. That means municipalities are left to decide, which leaves a patchwork of rules and a lot of confusion.

“There are a lot of municipalities that make their own rules, it’s a nightmare for law enforcement officers,” Hamers said.

And she added that laws are only good if they are enforced, which often doesn’t happen due to a lack of staff and money. Execution often takes place only after an escape or attack.

Hamers said many of the laws also allow many wild animals to be kept as pets, but most of those animals do not thrive in captivity.

“There’s going to be escapes and attacks and other things that are going to happen because we’re still allowed to keep most of the wild animals there,” Hamers said.

Of the 209 incidents documented in the database so far, 86 involved snakes, 20 involved tigers, 12 involved lions and there were nine monkeys, six alligators and seven elephants.

There were 138 incidents involving an exotic animal escaping or being deliberately dumped and 29 incidents where a person was attacked. Some of these were from escaped animals, others from animals kept in unsafe enclosures that allowed humans to get too close.

In many cases where an exotic animal escapes, it does not end well for them. Wolves and tigers were shot to protect people or other animals from being attacked. Sometimes they freeze to death, unable to cope with Canada’s climate.

In one case, a jaguar that escaped from a magic show had a heart attack and died from the stress of being chased to be recaptured.

Over the years, several people have been hospitalized or killed due to attacks or exposure to exotic animals.

In 2013, an African rock python snuck out of a pet store and killed Noah and Connor Barthe, ages four and six, who were sleeping in their upstairs apartment in New Brunswick.

In 2004, a 10-year-old boy was hospitalized after being attacked by a neighbor’s tiger that was being walked on a leash on a property in Southwold, Ont.

A salmonella outbreak linked to exotic snakes kept as pets has sickened 76 people in eight provinces since 2022, and a third of them were children under the age of five. Ten people were hospitalized and one died.

Last November, a woman in Latchford, Ont., north of Sudbury, was bitten by a one-armed baboon named Mark that had escaped from his nearby home.

Often an incident prompts a city or province to promise action. New Brunswick passed a new exotic animal law in 2017 in response to the deaths of the Barthe boys. But Hamers said that to date the law still lacks the necessary regulations attached to give it teeth.

Kirkland Lake, which is near Latchford, where Mark the baboon escaped, is moving to update its exotic animal laws as a result of that incident. But it’s also pushing the provincial government to do something to even things out across the province.

Similar calls have come from other municipalities facing animal cruelty cases and complaints from neighbors. In 2021, public health officers visited a property in Maynooth, Ontario, near Algonquin Provincial Park, where a couple kept lions, tigers and lemurs.

They discovered that the lions had escaped from their enclosure and attacked and killed a tiger. They also reported that there was not enough food or water available for the big cats and that the lemurs were being fed sugary breakfast cereal.

Hamers said the best exotic animal laws would ban all non-native animals from captivity and then make a limited list of what might be allowed. She said most existing laws now have lists of what is prohibited, leaving many animals still to be exploited.

“In British Columbia, there’s a great example of how they came up with the list, I think it’s about 1,200 different species, but no capybara, no serval,” Hamers said. “And guess what kind of animals are now very popular in the pet trade.”

There have been several service breakouts in recent years, including in B.C

Hamers hopes the online map will prompt people to write in incidents of animal escapes or attacks they know about that are not yet included. She also hopes that people who want to see an end to exotic animal captivity will step up and demand change in governments.

She said that every level of government has a role to play and that the “hoe” of laws must be resolved.

“We want to see the federal government step up and bring the provinces together to discuss this issue and really make sure we have a unified approach to the captive wildlife trade. Animals should be treated similarly. A bear in Nova Scotia has the same thing. needs as a bear in Alberta. It shouldn’t matter where they are in captivity, we should care for them in a similar way.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 8, 2024.

Mia Rabson, Canadian Press