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In less than two weeks, all five of the Philadelphia Zoo’s meerkats died. Now, the zoo needs to find out why.
“We had five meerkats that passed between June 1st and Monday,” Amy Shearer, chief experience officer for the zoo, said Wednesday in a phone interview. “The whole staff is devastated.”
The deaths could have “possibly” been caused by an agricultural dye called Nyanzol-D, she said.
“The Zoo is pursuing the possibility that the dye that has been used for 30 years to differentiate some of the animals may have caused a toxic reaction,” Shearer said.
The group of meerkats were siblings named Nkosi, Lula, Ari, Kgala and Nya, and had been at the zoo since 2013, according to Shearer.
