A three-year-old male jaguar has escaped it's enclosure at a New Orleans zoo and killed six animals.
Among the killed zoo mates were four alpacas, one emu and a fox, no humans were hurt in the incident.
Valero the Jaguar was first spotted outside its habitat enclosure at 7am on Satuday (local time). After an hour, staff members were able to capture the feline.
The CEO of Audubon Nature Institute, Ron Forman, told NBC News they hadn't seen anything like it in the century the zoo has been around.
The last major incident at the zoo occurred in 2001, when a jaguar cub named Mulac escaped its enclosure for 10 minutes before being tranquilised.
Three other animals were also injured, and the attack hurt or killed the entire alpaca population of the zoo.
- Auckland Zoo's last two lions euthanised
- Lions, tigers and a jaguar escape zoo enclosures
- Auckland Zoo welcomes the first Kiwi Galapagos tortoise
The zoo was closed while staff mourned and the vice president and curator, Joel Hamilton, says they will not be euthanising the jaguar.
"Unfortunately, it was doing what jaguars do," he said.
"We are looking to investigate everything that happened to prevent anything like this from ever happening again."
The global jaguar population is at a steady decline, with the species considered near-threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list.
Newshub.
