A Chinese safari park has been forced to apologise after a group of investors cruelly pushed a donkey into a tiger enclosure to watch it be mauled to death, after a dispute with the zoo's management.
The incident at Yangcheng Safari Park in China's eastern Jiangsu province was filmed by some zoo visitors on Monday afternoon (local time), and shared widely on social media.
The video shows four men creating a makeshift ramp into a moat in the tiger enclosure, before lifting the donkey onto it and sliding it down. The donkey is then almost immediately pounced on by one of the felines, and is later killed and eaten.
Local media reported that after the donkey was thrown in, the investors then tried to slide some sheep into the moat - but their plans were scuppered by zoo staff.
The investors involved in the cruel act acted because they had been "filled with anger for a long time" because they felt the safari park's management was "conspiring to cheat them out of their investments", according to reports.
A court case between the zoo and a company two years ago saw its assets frozen and its investment finances significantly reduced, while a chimpanzee and two giraffes died because they couldn't get permits to take them to a medical facility for treatment.
The zoo said in a statement that the shareholders were upset that they hadn't received dividends on their investment for such a long period of time, and because they were suspicious of zoo management.
Yangcheng Safari Park says it is "deeply sorry" for the incident, and said it was working on creating measures that would ensure something similar "would never happen again".
Newshub.
