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Mini zoo in spotlight after viral tweet
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Visitors pass the cage of a Cassowary, a protected species, put on display at a miniature zoo located at Tirta Gupti Swimming Pool, Cilodong, Depok, West Java on Tuesday. (The Jakarta Post/Tirta Utama Umbas)
T
he mini zoo inside an Army housing complex in Cilodong, Depok, West Java, has caught people’s attention following a viral Twitter post depicting the poor conditions of the animals living in the dirty cages.
The mini zoo along with the Tirta Gupti public swimming pool are within the compound area managed by the Army Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), adding scrutiny over the management’s capability.
For an entrance fee of Rp 15,000 (US$1.05) for children and Rp 20,000 for adults, members of the public can take a dip in one large pool and two smaller pools as well as walk around the area to look at the animals.
Local resident Muhammad Zakaria, 30, took his two children to the pool area on Tuesday to swim and took the chance to walk around the miniature zoo.
“I think the cages aren’t very clean because many visitors are littering and there’s a shortage of garbage bins available,” Zakaria said.
He also commented on the lack of animal descriptions on the cages and the visible lack of supervision in the miniature zoo.
Although by Tuesday the cages had been thoroughly cleaned with little plastic waste, organic waste remained present within the zoo as the food bucket containing rotten food in the cassowary cage was still there, and new waste could be seen such as rotten bananas in the monkey cage.
