Five lions escape zoo during "Roar and Snore" sleepover for guests
Sydney — Five African lions broke out of their enclosure at Sydney's harborside Taronga Zoo on Wednesday, triggering an emergency lockdown. The Reuters news agency said the escape happened while the zoo was hosting a "Roar and Snore" overnight stay program for visitors.
Alarms blared throughout the zoo and guests were rushed to safety before the lions were tracked down and returned safely to their exhibit. The zoo's executive director Simon Duffy told reporters one lion cub had to be tranquilized.
"This is a significant incident and a full review is now under way to confirm exactly how the lions were able to exit their main exhibit," he said. "We don't have the exact details of how and why that occurred."
Taronga Zoo — set in a leafy, affluent neighborhood with views of Sydney's famous opera house and harbor bridge — said it would be opening as normal later in the day. Zookeepers were seen probing the fences of the lion enclosure for signs of damage.
The zoo has two adult lions, mother Maya and father Ato, as well as their five cubs named Khari, Luzuko, Malika, Zuri and Ayanna.
A fully-grown male African lion can weigh as much as 550 pounds, while females can grow to 400 pounds.
A two-year-old Bengal tiger escaped its enclosure at Taronga Zoo in 1946, roaming the grounds in what a newspaper described as a "frenzy of fear" before it was shot and killed by a zoo keeper.
Some 20 police were rushed to a suburb in Sydney's west in 1982 after a lion was spotted near a soft drink factory — the culprit later identified as a pudgy cat called Ginger.
One of Sydney's most famous animal escapes occurred in February 2020, when baffled onlookers watched three baboons scampering about an inner-city car park after they bolted from a medical research facility.