The deceased animal in question was a 3-year-old giraffe named Roqa. Sedki said that the giraffe inadvertently hanged herself in early December after getting tangled in a wire inside her enclosure.
The state has launched 3 separate investigations — one purely forensic, another by the government’s official veterinary body and a third by a legal committee — “to see who will hang instead of the giraffe,” Sedki said with a wry laugh.
“Is there anyone who actually believes that this giraffe committed suicide?” Sedki asked one recent day.
As he spoke, a fresh, stinging cloud of tear gas wafted in through an open doorway, and the thudding blasts of tear-gas cannons could be heard from the latest clashes between police and student protesters at neighboring Cairo University.
The campus is located just northwest of the 122-year-old zoo, the biggest and oldest of Egypt’s seven zoological parks.
On its north flank, just outside the zoo’s main gate, is Nahda Square, which served as a permanent protest encampment for supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi for more than a month last summer.
Police used bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters in August, killing scores of people.
When police fire tear gas at protesters, the irritating vapors inevitably make their way toward the animal enclosures, compelling zookeepers to wrap their faces in scarves on the worst of days. It has gotten to the animals, too, Sedki said.
“The sounds of the bullets and the tear gas affect the animals,” he said. Some of the large animals, such as lions and hippos, have displayed “restlessness and tension,” he said.
He said zoo authorities had moved some of the animals to different enclosures but found they had few good options, given that all 80 acres of the zoo are bordered by roaring traffic and the gritty urban sprawl.
For that same reason, Egyptians see the zoo as a rare — if dilapidated and underfunded — oasis of green.
It costs around 73 cents (5 Egyptian pounds) to enter. Families bring picnics and set up camp for the entire day on the grassy medians. Couples stroll hand in hand, and bands of giggling teenagers roam.
“I know that in the West, going to the zoo is like going to a museum — you go to get knowledge,” Sedki said. “But here, they come to visit a garden, not a zoo.”
Animal rights activists — themselves a rare breed in Egypt — have long been concerned about conditions at Giza, which echo the nation’s widespread poverty and bureaucratic failings after decades of authoritarianism and turmoil.
“This is not a zoo,” said Mona Khalil, a founder of the Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals, which runs two shelters and provides free veterinary care to poor farmers on Cairo’s outskirts. “This is hell for animals.”
Many of the zoo’s employees earn less than $60 a month, activists say, and have little experience or training and even less incentive to protect the animals they care for.
Instead, the employees follow visitors over the zoo’s muddy and potholed paths, offering scattered “facts” about the animals’ daily lives or an opportunity to get closer — in the hope that it will yield tips.
On a recent afternoon, some keepers touted the chance to hold a baby lion — or if the visitor would prefer it, a monkey or a baby crocodile — for just 25 Egyptian pounds (around $3.60).
Adult lions, cramped in small, iron-barred cages that resembled the circus pens of an earlier era, crunched on animal carcasses, as visitors used their mobile phones to take pictures. Hippos and pelicans drifted through murky water. And a sickly black bear watched as a pair of stray cats hunched over its food dish.
“Anyone want a picture with a baby lion? Anyone want a picture with a baby lion?” an employee droned monotonously as he stood next to one row of cages, a camera around his neck.
A different zookeeper gestured toward a rhinoceros that was nosing around in the shade of some trees.
“Her husband died six months ago,” the keeper said, in a cheerful, casual tone. “She killed him with her horn.” Without further explanation, the keeper quickly walked away.
No one in the zoo’s administrative office was quite sure how many animals are kept on the premises.
Staff searched through files in the high-ceilinged administrative headquarters — a building full of binders, and apparently devoid of computers — but were able to find figures only from 2009: 78 species of mammals, 82 species of birds and 26 species of reptiles — for a total of 4,631 individual animals.
Of those, about “forty-something” are lions, Sedki said.
In 2010, the zoo began to separate most of the lions by gender in an effort to stem its skyrocketing lion population. Meat is pricey, and space is limited.
To cope, many of the big cats are packed two per cramped cage. They eat mostly donkey carcasses, zookeepers said, and they “fast” one day a week.
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