Venezuela crisis: Zoo animals stolen and eaten amid food shortages [View all]

[Bacchus4.0]

Zoo animals in Venezuela are being stolen and eaten as the country sinks further into a food shortage crisis, local police have said.

The Zulia Metropolitan Zoological Park in the city of Maracaibo reported that more than ten species of animals had gone missing from the facility in recent weeks.

Officers said they “presumed” the buffalo, tapirs and collared peccaries - small pig-like mammals - had been stolen for food.


Leonard Nunez, the head of the zoo, said he believed the animals had been stolen by drug dealers who later sold them on the black market. “They take everything here,” he told local reporters.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-crisis-zoo-animals-stolen-eaten-food-shortages-nicolas-maduro-a7898006.html