The little zoo of horrors: a personal account of ‘Club de los Animalitos’
We hear a great deal about large zoos with money to spend on maintaining enclosures and keeping up the appearance of conservation work, but what about the countless small, private zoos around the world? Coco Hou tells us about her experience visiting Club de los Animalitos in Mexico.
I moved to Tehuacán in Puebla, Mexico to teach English three months ago. Soon after my arrival, my students told me about a zoo in this small city called “Club de los Animalitos” - that translates to something like “little animals’ club”. They described it as a zoo that is “quite different from European zoos” where the animals live in terrible conditions. I didn’t really know what exactly this meant, but I decided to go to get a first-hand experience. I wasn’t really planning on turning it into some kind of investigation, I was just curious to see what exactly the students were talking about.
My experience was absolutely horrifying. When approaching the zoo, I could already smell the odour two streets away, a combination of animal excrement and other kinds of waste that hadn’t been cleaned. When you first enter the zoo, you come across small cages for tigers made out of thick, imposing green metal rods and concrete floors. There are about 15 tigers, all without access to any greenery; there is only a tiny pool of water for about three tigers in the same cage. Across from the tigers are the two bears and five pumas. Just like the tigers, these animals are also trapped behind thick, green metal rods in tiny enclosures that barely give them any space to move. Even though I’m not an animal behaviour expert, the animals’ body language and appearance were enough to show that they were unhappy.
One of the worst sections was the monkey enclosure, where about 15 monkeys were trapped in cages. They live very cramped lives inside the cages and several of them seemed very hungry and agitated the day I went. They kept yelling very loudly for more peanuts, which you can buy at the entrance to feed the animals. I heard that the animals are not given much food, at least not the smaller animals, so visitors can buy this food, mainly for the monkeys, porcupines and birds, which the animals will immediately devour, a potential sign of animals being fed very little normally.
One of the most shocking images I simply cannot get out of my head is that of one monkey who was holding a dead rat in her arms as if it was her baby. Perhaps her baby died previously and was taken from her so she adopted this dead rat instead? Or perhaps she killed the rat herself, and if so, are the conditions this monkey lives in making her more aggressive?
Walking further down into the zoo, there were wolves, deer, elks, a bear, other large cats, birds, and a little aquarium. The bear and the cheetah especially seemed very agitated. They were walking in circles around the cage. This is a sign of zoochosis - the obsessive, repetitive behaviour that arises when wild animals are held captive.
Taking a look at Tripadvisor, the opinions are quite mixed and some people don’t seem to truly understand the condition these animals live in, but one review clearly stated that “this place is terrible. It is so sad to see the animals confined in such small areas and in such bad conditions. All the cages are old and dirty, it smells really bad and the animals look so sad.”
In 2017, an organisation called “Justicia y Dignidad Animal” made a video about the zoo and they even got pretty good media coverage. The organisation also had a petition and organised protests to pressure the zoo owner to close the zoo and donate the animals to larger animal centres like a large safari park in the same state which would at least give these animals much larger living spaces. The safari park was able to adopt a few animals, but that was it. Unfortunately, not much happened after that and I can testify that the conditions for the animals have not changed.
The zoo owner is the real problem. He is actually very friendly with the visitors, and on top of that, he is also an English student at the school I teach at. He has taken many of the other language teachers on tours through the zoo and even invited them to his house where according to one teacher, he keeps tiger cubs. In fact, he breeds the tigers he keeps in the zoo and then rips the cubs from their mothers to sell them on the black market.
The largest problem to overcome is not the zoo owner’s superficial kindness at our school but the fact that he is a powerful politician and has the possibility to bribe the authorities so they don’t inspect his zoo. The owner has a great reputation among foreigners because he invites them to the zoo or for dinner and takes them to places, but some local people fear him and are intimidated by his political and financial power.
Because as a politician he can influence media stories about him, when there is an article in the news about the zoo it is mainly positive news. Even after the protest in 2017 when the owner gave the animals to the safari park, the news promoted this event as something positive. According to my students, the action was described as a “gift” the zoo made to the safari park. The government always tries to glorify the zoo owner. I even saw an article by the Mexican Federal Consumer Protection Agency (Procuraduría Federal del Consumidor, abbv. PROFECO) stating that the zoo had met all standards and had complied with all measures of safety and cleanliness.
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Recently, a ñu escaped from the zoo but he was caught shortly after in a very cruel manner. Not many people seemed to have noticed nor found this unacceptable because the ñu was brought back to the zoo and nobody complained about how this situation was handled. I am sure many similar acts happen inside the zoo but they aren’t brought to the attention of the public.
Witnessing the conditions the animals live in first hand and reading all these articles, I decided to take action. A student of mine, George, and I contacted the safari park in Puebla to ask whether they would be able to adopt more animals so they can at least live in better conditions and wider spaces, but the park replied that the request for animals should come from a governmental authority and not individuals. We might try to contact the PROFECO but because of the political influence of the zoo owner, even if the agency were to come to investigate the zoo, the owner would likely bribe them and manage to get himself out of trouble.
I feel quite powerless because of the political and financial power this zoo owner has, but what I have done so far is talk with my students about this topic and encourage them to think critically and question the way the animals are kept and treated in the zoo. Most of my students openly said that they would never go back; they went there as kids when they still didn’t fully understand how horrible the conditions in the zoo were but now they don’t want to go back and understand the severity of this problem.
Also outside of the classroom, I want to spread the word and I started talking to people in Tehuacán about this and showing them videos. I ask locals, ‘what do you know about the zoo and what do you know about the owner?’ This way I am trying to gather more information and then share it in future conversations I have. I want to engage in discussions with people to make them realise that animals deserve freedom, that animals have rights.
A problem here in Mexico is that many dog owners don’t even treat their dogs well. They keep them on the rooftops and never take them outside. And there are many stray dogs. So it is hard to draw parallels as we maybe would do in Europe where we could say, ‘look, we take care of our dogs and take them outside, so we also have to take care of animals in zoos and in fact, not even have them in zoos to begin with’. I am trying to engage in conversations with locals about animal care in general, dogs/cats and zoo animals alike.
Moreover, I started a petition to close down the zoo which has been signed by many local and international individuals. I am not sure how much change it will bring about but it is another effort to spread the word, also internationally. George mentioned that the zoo owner seems to still be acquiring new animals and I can only imagine how crammed the animals must be now so even if only to make pressure, I decided to start this petition.
In the end, I realised how tricky the situation is. It is more of an education problem that causes this phenomenon to be present in a lot of places. People are not educated as children that animals should be respected and that we’re all connected as creatures on this planet. I did try to talk to the zoo owner but during my conversation with him, even though he was quite friendly and kind to me, I realised that he doesn’t see the zoo as a problem at all. On the contrary, he thinks it is a great place for local people to visit and that he is helping the animals by keeping them in cages. In my opinion, this zoo situation is very challenging and changes can only be made by higher authorities, which is why people’s voices need to be heard and these authorities need to know that people are against the existence of the zoo.
I hope that my petition, my efforts to inform people about Club de los Animalitos and educational initiatives led by other campaigners can help create both local and global awareness about zoos, and increase pressure to improve the conditions for the animals and, in time, lead to a world without zoos at all.
Coco Hou was born in China but grew up in Canada. She now lives in Germany where she is doing her studies to become an art therapist. Coco is an artist, musician, minimalist, backpacker, language teacher and animal lover who is trying to change the world one tiny step at a time by spreading art and kindness wherever she goes.
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