Chimpanzees escape zoo enclosure and then are shot in Sweden, officials say. ‘Tragic’

Multiple chimpanzees were shot and killed after they broke out of their enclosure in a Swedish zoo on Wednesday, Dec. 14, according to local media reports.

The primates escaped their enclosure at the Furuvik Zoo, located about 100 miles north of Stockholm, setting off a search effort aided by drones, according to the Local Sweden.

Three of the chimpanzees were eventually shot to death, and a fourth was potentially injured, according to Radio Sweden.

In a statement released Dec. 16, the zoo identified two of the dead chimpanzees as Linda and Torsten, and the two that are either injured or dead were identified as Santino and Manda.

Santino had previously been the focus of global media attention after he was observed collecting rocks to throw at zoo visitors, Radio Sweden reported.

A spokesperson for the zoo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.

“This whole situation is tragic in every possible way,” Annika Troselius, a press officer for the company that owns the park, told a local station, Local Sweden reported. “It shouldn’t happen. We need to take full responsibility and investigate this.”

The day after the animals escaped, four of them, including one who was wounded, were still on the loose inside a building at the zoo, according to The Guardian.

The injured animal has not been given medical treatment because of safety concerns, Swedish officials said, according to the outlet.

Following criticism over the fatal shootings, zoo officials said that an attempt to sedate the animals would have posed a danger to humans, according to the BBC.

As of Dec. 16, two days after the initial breakout, several of the animals had still not been secured, the outlet reported.

These primates were not the first animals to break out from a Swedish zoo. A king cobra, a deadly snake, escaped from a zoo near Stockholm, disappearing through a ceiling light fixture, according to NPR. The creature was later located one week later.

There has been some debate over the ethics of keeping animals in zoos, particularly comparatively intelligent species like chimpanzees. Some have argued the enclosures keep species from going extinct and allow for valuable research to be conducted. Others contend that the physical and mental anguish that confined animals endure is not worth the potential benefits.

Google Translate was used to translate a statement from the Furuvik Zoo.