Phuket Zoo

We have started a campaign that aims at decreasing the use of wild animals as tourist attractions. Because we advise tourists to avoid having their picture taken with wild animals on the streets, we wanted to find an option where tourist could photograph animals with a good conscious. We were wondering whether the Phuket Zoo could be such an option, and decided to go have a look.

The entrance fee for the Zoo is 500 baht (13 euros) for adults and 300 bahts (8 euros) for children. As soon as we got in through the gates, it became clear that the zoo is by no means recommendable to anyone. We had come to a place with animals captured in small cement bottom cages. Many animals were deeply disturbed.  The tigers circled their cages in a restless way and the bears were begging tourists for food. The most disturbing sight was, however, five elephants that were chained to the cement ground by their feet and restlessly swung back and forth with their heads. To our best knowledge, the elephants are only released from the chains during the elephant shows and they had no “natural” structures, such as trees or grass, surrounding them.

The zoo did not fulfill its educational purpose either. The species signs were inadequate, if present at all. There was no info about the animals’ natural range or living habits. The thing that the zoo was specialized in was cashing in money from photographing tourists with the animals for the price of 200 baht.  

For example, it was possible to have your picture taken with a tiger chained to a pedestal. The greatest picture was of course obtained if the tiger roared, and therefore, a local man was poking the tiger with a stick to irritate it and make it roar. It was shocking to see how many tourists just closed their eyes to the misery of the animals just to get nice souvenir pictures to take home.  
 

In addition to the pictures, the zoo was specialized in monkey, crocodile and elephant shows. The idea was to make the elephants stay in funny positions, make the monkeys ride bikes and the crocodiles lie with their mouth open during the shows. This is by no means natural behavior of the animals and the shows are certainly not enjoyable for them, quite the opposite: the shows are animal abuse in its worst form and should not be part of any zoo. 

Our experience was that the zoo was very badly taken care of and its only purpose was to cash in as much money as possible from the visitors at the expense of the animals. We can certainly not recommend the zoo. 

It is possible to see elephants, gibbon apes and sea turtles in Phuket where the animals’ wellbeing has been taken into consideration. Visit Siam Safari for elephants, The WARF gibbon rehabilitation center for gibbons and Phuket Aquarium for sea turtles.