The Werribee Open Range Zoo in Australia has come up with an idea to get visitors 'up close and personal' with a hungry lion or two. The Daily Mail reports:
The four passengers in the jeep must feel a whisker away from death as a lion jumps up on to their bonnet [hood] for lunch.
But that's all part of the attraction. The jeep is a new zoo exhibit which allows visitors to get incredibly close to the lions.
The back part of the vehicle, up to where the windscreen should be, is actually on the outside of the reinforced glass cage. The bonnet is on the inside, and covered with meat to entice the big cats closer.
There's more at the link. Here's a short video clip of what it looks like from the front seat.
Well . . . it's a good idea, in theory, but being from a part of the world where lions eat people on a fairly regular basis to this day, I'd want to make darn sure that the glass was both very strong, and not subject to deterioration in bright sunlight, as some varieties of perspex and plastic 'glass' panels have proved to be. I want something very sturdy between me and a hungry kitty that size, thank you very much!
Peter
Taronga Zoo in Sydney has a similar glass wall.
ReplyDeleteI am always nervous there.
The earliest memory I have, at 3 yo, is of my mum sitting up in bed middle of the night with a huge shotgun in her hands while outside in the veranda a leopard was making a racket, trying to get at "her cub".
Hence my "nervousness" to this day...
Back in the 50s and early 60s, most of inland Mozambique had more lions and leopards than people. We lived first near the border with Malawi, after that near then Rhodesia.