Red Panda Found Following Escape From Adelaide Zoo

Instigating two-day search


Article heading image for Red Panda Found Following Escape From Adelaide Zoo

Australia Zoo

A red panda has been found after escaping from Adelaide Zoo instigating a two-day-long search.

Red panda Ravi escaped from his enclosure at the Adelaide Zoo on Friday before making his way to nearby botanical gardens.

Following a two-day search, the panda was found up a Moreton Bay fig tree at the Botanic Park on Sunday by a security guard.

Keepers were forced to use a tranquiliser after several unsuccessful attempts to lure Ravi out of the tree using some of his favourite food including sweet corn, dried figs and bamboo.

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Keepers waited for the panda to fall from the tree before catching him with blankets.

Adelaide Zoo Director Phil Ainsley told the ABC that the zoo will be watching CCTV footage to determine how Ravi escaped from his enclosure.

“This morning what we’ll be doing is reviewing all of our CCTV footage from around the zoo, there will be a couple of things, firstly to try and understand how he got out of his main enclosure, and secondly how he managed to breach our external fence,”

- Adelaide Zoo Director Phil Ainsley

Ravi will be kept in the animal health department until keepers can determine how he escaped.

Dr Ainsley said the public were not alerted to the missing panda because staff believed he was likely still on zoo property.

“We deemed him low risk, but the other part was we actually thought that it was more likely he was inside the zoo based on the fact that he was newer in the space.”  

Ravi was moved to Adelaide Zoo from Queensland’s Australia Zoo only last week.

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Georgie Marr

15 August 2022

Article by:

Georgie Marr




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