A 12-year-old Perth resident has captured the astonishing moment an orangutan escaped from a local zoo.
Whilst visiting the zoo with his sister on Sunday, Reilly Lovegrove noticed that a precocious young orangutan named Teliti had begun climbing out of her enclosure using a nearby sun shade sail.
Once she was able to reach the railing above, Teliti catapulted herself onto a crowded walkway – in the midst of zoo-goers.
Speaking about his recording to The West Australian, Reilly said he watched while people on the walkway patted, played with and tried to pick up Teliti – a dangerous move.
“We didn’t see it get caught. The zoo keepers told us we had to stay with them and… to not do anything stupid with it… to act like it was all under control,” said Reilly, “We saw people trying to put their hands on it and trying to pick it up. It was pretty scary people were actually doing that. I would not come within two metres of it.”
Abandoning his camera to alert zoo staff – as he had been told to do by his smart mother – Reilly raced to nearby zookeepers.
Not believing him at first, until he waved the footage in their faces, the keepers than ran towards Teliti, where they were able to capture her and put her back in her enclosure.
In a following statement, the zoo staff revealed that Teliti’s actions were more a playful exploration of the zoo, rather than a break for freedom.
“Like a lot of adventurous five-year-olds, she has taken the opportunity to test her boundaries, but soon realised it was preferable with her orangutan colony,” a spokesperson said, “Her calm nature and trust in her dedicated keepers enabled us to quickly secure her in the orangutan night quarters.”
However, Perth Zoo is no stranger to animal escapees – in fact, they’ve had a number of their furry and scaly friends attempt to break free.
In 2012, a black-and-white lemur made its way from his enclosure to the reception area. Meanwhile the zoo has also seen the foiled escape attempts of a red-tailed black cockatoo, a sneaky quokka, a venomous snake and even two tortoises – who move at a whopping 0.26 km/h.
Maybe it’s the poor room service?
