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Circus animals perish on 20-hour drive
Source: Agencies |
December 23, 2009, Wednesday
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EIGHT tigers and a lioness belonging to a Russian traveling circus died during a 20-hour truck journey across Siberia, police said yesterday.
The animals were dead when they arrived in the city of Yakutsk, police spokesman Nikolai Sizykh said. No cause has been determined, but among the possibilities are poisoning from exhaust fumes or food poisoning.
Overheating was a third possible cause, said Yevgeny Yudashkin, an administrator of the private Mechta circus based in the southern city of Krasnodar.
Another circus employee said that although the truck was supposed to be opened every two hours for ventilation, this was not done.
A Doberman dog traveling in the same truck as the Indian tigers and the lioness survived, Yudashkin said. Dogs and a bear traveling in a second truck arrived healthy, he said.
News Website Kursor.ru showed photographs of the dead tigers, one piled on top of another in a cage. Some had their abdomens cut open, which the site said was for toxicology tests.
The animals had performed in Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East and were traveling to Yakutsk, a journey of about 2,400 kilometers, to perform.
They were last seen alive in the city of Neryungri, 820 kilometers from Yakutsk, a 20-hour drive. The temperature in the region was minus 36 degrees Celsius yesterday and the animals were in a heated truck.
The animals were dead when they arrived in the city of Yakutsk, police spokesman Nikolai Sizykh said. No cause has been determined, but among the possibilities are poisoning from exhaust fumes or food poisoning.
Overheating was a third possible cause, said Yevgeny Yudashkin, an administrator of the private Mechta circus based in the southern city of Krasnodar.
Another circus employee said that although the truck was supposed to be opened every two hours for ventilation, this was not done.
A Doberman dog traveling in the same truck as the Indian tigers and the lioness survived, Yudashkin said. Dogs and a bear traveling in a second truck arrived healthy, he said.
News Website Kursor.ru showed photographs of the dead tigers, one piled on top of another in a cage. Some had their abdomens cut open, which the site said was for toxicology tests.
The animals had performed in Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East and were traveling to Yakutsk, a journey of about 2,400 kilometers, to perform.
They were last seen alive in the city of Neryungri, 820 kilometers from Yakutsk, a 20-hour drive. The temperature in the region was minus 36 degrees Celsius yesterday and the animals were in a heated truck.
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