Alert to Police: Pony Attack at Roadside Zoo Violates State Law

PETA Calls For Investigation After Bear Pins Down, Bites Pony at Wild Wilderness Drive-Through Safari

For Immediate Release:
October 3, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA sent a letter asking the Benton County Sheriff’s Office and the Arkansas State Police to investigate Wild Wilderness Drive-Through Safari over an incident last month in which visitors to the roadside zoo caught on video a bear biting a pony while pinning her down. The visitors also reported that they had witnessed the bear grabbing the pony by the neck and becoming covered with blood.

“The terror and pain that this pony must have felt while being pinned down and bitten by a bear is difficult to imagine,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “PETA is calling on authorities to investigate this incident and, if warranted, throw the book at this careless roadside zoo for allowing this dangerous and entirely preventable attack to occur.”

In the letter, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that Wild Wilderness Drive-Through Safari’s practice of housing dangerous captive wildlife and domestic animals in the same enclosures places the vulnerable animals at serious risk of sustaining injuries, suffering, and dying. The group further notes that the incident in question appears to violate Arkansas’ statutory prohibitions against cruelty to animals and aggravated cruelty to an equine.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please visit PETA.org.