T

he Surakarta zoo authority has blamed a recent lion escape on “loneliness” and zoo keepers see it necessary to find him a “roommate”.

The male lion, named Oni, escaped from the Taru Jurug Zoo as one of the keepers forgot to lock the cage on Tuesday.

Mayor Joko Widodo did not view the keeper’s lapse as the sole cause of the escape, however. He said finding him a partner would be an option to help prevent similar occurrences in the future.

“If necessary, we are ready to help to find a female lion,” the mayor said on Tuesday, adding that a cage mate might be able to appease Oni in the future.

The 12-year-old African lion, weighing 90 kilograms, reportedly escaped at 11:00 a.m. and was eventually herded back home two hours later. No fatalities were reported as a result of the escape thanks to the fact that the zoo authority immediately managed to restrict the lion’s roaming area and visitors were promptly evacuated. While no human fatalities were reported, a camel was attacked and died later due to excessive bleeding.

According to the zoo’s standard procedures, after cleaning the cage, a trained zoo keeper would feed the lion.

It turned out that after feeding the lion, the keeper forgot to lock the cage. When the keeper went to clean the tigers’ cage, the lion was already outside its enclosure.

Lilik Kristianto, the director of city-owned company managing the zoo, refused to punish Agus Purwanto, the animal keeper, saying that the incident was due to “human error that might happen to every animal keeper”.

“We are at the moment concerned about the safety of visitors, zoo attendants and the animals,” he said.

He said Agus was an experienced and reliable keeper. The zoo authority has now installed an extra door to the lion’s cage.