Over the weekend, a Texas woman hopped over a barrier at the El Paso Zoo to enter the facility’s spider monkey enclosure.
“Stupid and lucky,” zoo director Joe Montisano said of the incident, which left the woman and the animals unharmed.
“They may be small monkeys, but they can take you to the ground if they wanted to,” added Kleist.
kvia abc 7/ youtube
“Anything that we have they could get as well, so COVID is no different,” Kleist told ABC 7. “We took the necessary steps to prevent them from getting that, so for someone to just go in there and give them food from their hands could just ruin that.”
Kleist also noted that the woman disrupted the zookeepers' and monkeys' relationship through her actions.
“It takes years to build trust with these animals, and for someone to come in there for five minutes for a video on Instagram or whatever just ruins years of work,” he said.
“It’s going to take a long time to get them back to where they were,” added Kleist.
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source: people.com
