Escaped chimpanzees put back in enclosure in Sweden, some shot dead

Swedish zoo officials said they were able to recapture three chimpanzees who had broken out of their enclosure but that they had shot four others.

The Furuvik zoo said in a statement Saturday that the surviving animals are now being looked after and one who is injured is receiving veterinary care.

The apes had escaped on Wednesday, with some of them making their way out of the monkey house where they lived. Officials were forced to shoot them because of the danger to the public. Two were shot in the zoo grounds and one was confirmed dead inside the monkey house.

When keepers were finally able to get inside on Saturday, they found the body of a fourth chimp.

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"What has happened is a great tragedy and a huge failure of us," the zoo said in a statement on Facebook.

"We all feel a huge sadness about what has happened and mourn our beloved chimps Linda, Torsten, Santino and Manda. ... We are very keen to get to the bottom of how this could have happened and the investigation may show where we have (failed) or if we could have acted differently."

The zoo identified the surviving chimps as Selma, Maria-Magdalena and Tjobbe, and said Selma's injuries were being treated.

The Jane Goodall Institute has issued a statement on the subject on Saturday, saying "Shooting chimpanzees should only be a very last resort in case of imminent danger to others. From what we can assess, it is highly questionable that this was the case." 

The institute also chided the zoo for not having enough tranquilisers to sedate the escaped animals until they could be captured instead of killing them, noting: "It is never possible to guarantee that chimpanzees, who are highly intelligent, will be unable to find a way to escape from their enclosures, whether in a zoo or a sanctuary.

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"Therefore there should always be a plan, well understood by keepers and caregivers, that enables escaped chimpanzees to be persuaded to return to their enclosures without danger of harming other animals or humans."

The Furuvik zoo is located near Gavle, 165 kilometers (100 miles) north of Stockholm. It is part of an amusement park. According to the park's website, it is also the only primate research station in the Nordic countries.

It is not the first time in recent months that animals have escaped from Swedish zoos. In October, a venomous king cobra escaped from its terrarium at a zoo in Sweden but returned by itself after a week.