Haunted Zoo Mystery: Gorillas’ Strange Window Tapping Stuns Urban Explorers Years After Closure
So picture this: a zoo closes down, and naturally, the million-dollar question pops up—what on earth do you do with the animals who’ve been living the captive life so long they might struggle outside their plastic jungle gyms? Enter the urban explorers, those modern-day Indiana Jones types who just had to snoop around the shuttered Bristol Zoo in the UK, only to stumble upon something straight out of a plot twist: gorillas still hanging out in their enclosures like the zoo’s gone on a long coffee break. The viral video sparked a frenzy—“Why are these gorillas still there?” “What’s the zoo hiding?”—making you wonder if zoos have a secret society of disgruntled primates plotting their escape. But put down your pitchforks; turns out, Bristol Zoo’s just in the middle of a zoo version of a house move, shifting gorillas to a snazzy new “African Forest” spot that’s still a work in progress. Makes perfect sense not to uproot these gorillas until their new crib is ready, right? Meanwhile, the poor creatures have been dealing with alarm-triggering break-ins by curious thrill-seekers (don’t do that!). So before you start imagining gorillas locked up in some forgotten dungeon, breathe easy—they’re being cared for and patiently waiting for their shiny new digs. Curious to dive deeper into this saga of zoos, gorillas, and urban explorers? LEARN MORE
When a zoo closes one of the main jobs is figuring out what to do with all of the animals, who have probably spent so long outside their natural habitat that they’d struggle to survive there.
But old zoo sites are also ripe targets for urban explorers to poke around in, and recently one such explorer came across a zoo that had been closed to the public with animals still there.
Bristol Zoo in the UK closed its doors to visitors in 2022 after financial pressures from the pandemic became too much to bear, but when a few years later an urban explorer decided to investigate it they found some gorillas still in their enclosure.
Acting as though there was some great secret to be uncovered in their video they wondered ‘what are you hiding’ and ‘what is it you don’t want everyone to know’ before showing the gorillas.
The urban explorer raged that ‘these gorillas should never be in there’ in a video which went viral – but updates from the zoo reveal the truth.
You can put the pitchforks down, Bristol Zoo is just moving to another location and the African Forest habitat at the new location is still having some work done on it.
It wouldn’t make sense to take the gorillas out of one habitat they were used to staying in when the next one wasn’t available, and Bristol does not really need homeless gorillas when their current accommodation is still there.
Earlier this year they said they’d ‘been dealing with break ins at the old Bristol Zoo Gardens site’ where the gorillas were still being cared for, and that people getting in set off the alarms which distressed the animals.
A couple of days ago the zoo released an update on the African Forest habitat and it seems like progress is coming along swimmingly.
They’re busy planting trees, building enclosures and they’ve put in the climbing structures for the gorillas when they move in.
Responding to people’s questions on social media, the zoo staff said that the gorilla enclosure would be completed ‘within the next couple of months’ and they’d be moving over then.
The zoo also explained the gorillas could still go outside in their current home, and ‘recommend not getting your information from people who break into zoos to film content’.
So it would appear that, far from being stuck in a small building in a closed-down zoo and trying to break out, the gorillas are still in their previous enclosure being cared for until they can be moved to the new digs.
Also don’t break into places for content, you could end up in trouble.
LADbible group has contacted Bristol Zoo for comment.
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