A Leopard Is Missing At The Dallas Zoo, & The Twitter Responses Are WILD

Leopard
Ashok Nath via Getty Images

Alright, this is wild.

I feel like if you work at a zoo, you have one key job:

MAKE SURE THE ANIMALS DON’T ESCAPE.

I mean, c’mon, how does this even happen? Did somebody accidentally leave the gate open? Is the animal just that sneaky?

Well that’s exactly what happened today at the Dallas Zoo…

And the animal? A clouded leopard.

Native to the foothills of the Himalayas, through mainland Southeast Asia into South China, clouded leopards are excellent climbers weighing between 25 and 50 pounds on average. They can jump nearly 4 feet in the air, and primarily hunt at night.

Considered Endangered by the United States, hunting is also banned in Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

As a result, you can find them in zoos across the world… like the Dallas zoo. Or at least you used to be able to find one there. Until today…

The zoo made the announcement on Twitter:

“The Zoo is closed today due to a serious situation.

We have an ongoing situation at the Zoo right now with a Code Blue – that is a non-dangerous animal that is out of its habitat. One of our clouded leopards was not in its habitat when the team arrived this morning and is unaccounted for at this time.

Dallas PD is onsite assisting with the search efforts. The Zoo is closed today as our teams work to find and recover the animal. Given the nature of these animals, we believe the animal is still on grounds and hiding. We will share updates and more information as soon as we can.

Our focus right now is on locating the animal.”

“Non-dangerous animal?” I’m not a leopard expert by any means, and I can see that they’re generally quite a bit smaller than the average big cat, but I 100% feel like they have the capacity to severely hurt or even kill a human being.

You wanna tango with a 50-pound cat? I don’t think so…

Just imagine this thing running around the streets of Dallas (of course, folks with giant cats in Texas isn’t exactly out of the ordinary).

Not to mention, the Twitter comments are absolutely wild:

 

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