The veterinarians at Omaha’s Zoo & Aquarium in Nebraska, USA were surprised when they noticed that one of their most popular animals, a rare white American alligator named Thibodaux, had ‘metal foreign objects’ inside its stomach. The vets made this discovery while they were performing routine checkups on the zoo’s 10 alligators. This prompted the vets to operate on the 36-year-old alligator to remove the metal objects before they caused any health complications. During the operation, it turned out the alligator had ingested over 70 coins that were probably thrown into the enclosure by the visitors.
Christina Ploog, an associate veterinarian at the zoo, who led the operation described the intricate procedure and said, “With the help of his training, Thibodaux was anaesthetised and intubated to allow us to safely manage him during the procedure. A plastic pipe was placed to protect his mouth and safely pass the tools used to access the coins, such as a camera that helped us guide the retrieval of these objects.”
A post shared by Omaha’s Zoo & Aquarium (@theomahazoo)
After the procedure, the vets took Thibodaux’s X-ray tests and confirmed that all metal objects were extracted. The alligator showed prompt recovery and was back at its zoo enclosure.
Recently, Omaha’s Zoo & Aquarium shared photos of the coins extracted from the alligator on Instagram and asked visitors to not throw any coin at the animals or in any of the zoo enclosures excerpt in the coin wishing well.
Commenting on this post, an Instagram user wrote, “The fact that we have to tell people not to throw coins or any object into an animal enclosure shows just how much common sense people DONT have. If you can’t respect animals and nature, maybe the zoo isn’t the place for you.”
Someone observed, “The amount of times I have seen people harassing that poor alligator, I swear! The zoo needs to have an employee in there reminding visitors not to turn on their flashlights to see things and throw items in at him. It happens just about every time we go, which is fairly often.”
Another remarked, “The one time that I’ve seen this exhibit and saw this animal I saw a coin on his back. I was so angry that people would do that. I think people think it’s okay to do that because they want to make sure that the animal is real and alive and so they throw in a coin to see if it reacts and don’t even think about what happens if they ingest it or if they get hurt from someone tossing a coin at them.”
What's your reaction?
Comments
0 comment