The children reportedly stepped on the peacock's tail and plucked its feathers
A video going viral in China shows children chasing after a white peacock at a zoo. The children even ripped out some of the peacock's tail feathers, reports local media. The whole time, their parents simply watched from a distance, refusing to intervene. Just last week, zoo-goers plucked tail feathers from four live peacocks in China. This is the fourth such incident to take place in China this year.
A visitor to the Qinhuangdao Wildlife Park in the northern Hebei province filmed the footage. The visitor told
Chinese news website btime.com that the children stepped on the peacock's majestic tail repeatedly and mercilessly plucked its feathers.
A video posted on YouTube by Shanghaiist shows at least four to six toddlers running after a white peacock. Some of the children can be seen holding large white peacock feathers. A few adults visible in the camera frame are also seen holding feathers.
Peacock feathers are thought to bring luck in many cultures.
Watch the video below: An official from the wildlife park said a staff member went over to "educate" the parents shortly after,
Shanghaiist quotes btime.com as reporting. The park also said that the peacock was not hurt by the children.
Earlier this week,
tourists visiting a zoo in eastern China reportedly plucked tail feathers from four live peacocks. It was the second such instance reported from Liwan Zoo in Yangzhou, Jiangsu this year. It's unclear how the zoo-goers managed to enter the enclosure that houses the peacocks as visitors' access to it was barred after a similar incident earlier this year.
Pictures going viral on Chinese social networking sites suggested that all the four peacocks' long tail feathers had been pulled out, South China Morning Post reported. According to Beijing Youth Daily, the tourists tugged so hard on the feathers that there were traces of blood found by zoo-keepers.
China's lightly regulated zoos and wildlife parks often make headlines for all the wrong reasons, typically involving abysmal conditions in which animals are kept or insensitive actions by zoo-goers.
In April,
visitors to a zoo in Fujian province killed one kangaroo and injured another by throwing bricks at them in a horrifyingly misguided attempt to get the marsupials to hop.
Last June, horrified visitors to an animal park in Jiangsu province watched as
tigers killed a donkey that was released into their enclosure by investors angry over a business dispute related to the zoo.Click for more
trending news