Zoo in fear of potato poisoner after death of camel and elephant

A killer may be stalking the animal enclosures at Kiev zoo after a camel became the fourth victim of a suspected poisoning attack. The four-year-old white camel died a month after the zoo’s only Asian elephant suffered a similar fate. Two yaks fell ill earlier this month but vets managed to save them.

The zoo said in a statement that a middle-aged man had been seen loitering near the enclosure where the camel, named Maya, lived. Her keepers found boiled potatoes near by that somebody had apparently attempted to feed to her. The camel had refused food and drink for five days before she died. “There are strong reasons to believe it was a premeditated poisoning,” the statement read.



The zoo’s chief vet, Vitaliy Kobylinski, said that the yaks suffered similar symptoms after eating food thrown into their enclosure and survived only after receiving emergency resuscitation. The 39-year-old elephant, named Boy, died on April 26 in an incident that the zoo’s director, Svitlana Berzina, said bore all the hallmarks of a deliberate poisoning. Boiled eggs were found in the enclosure on the day he died, although they were not part of his diet. “The animal was in stable condition and nothing indicated any trouble,” she said.

Ms Berzina suggested that the attacks could be part of a plot by rivals to have her dismissed from her post as director so that they could take control of ticket sales and snack concessions at the establishment. The zoo, which opened in 1910, has a collection of about 2,000 animals but needed a subsidy of £860,000 from the city council last year to balance its books.