Photo: The Canadian Press Zoo keepers prepare to catch Ravi, a 7-year-old red panda, from a tree near the zoo he escaped from days earlier, Sunday, Aug. 14, 2022, in Adelaide, Australia. A red panda that spent two days strangled after escaping from an Australian zoo was recaptured on Sunday after it was spotted hanging out in a fig tree in a nearby park. Named Ravi, the 7-year-old panda had arrived at Adelaide Zoo last week after being brought in from another zoo in the hope he would mate with a female red panda named Mishry. But by Friday, Ravi was gone. Adelaide Zoo director Phil Ainsley told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that zookeepers spent Sunday trying to lure Ravi down from the fig tree with some of his favorite foods, such as bamboo and sweet corn, to no avail. At the end they shot a tranquilizer dart. “We used a few different dart devices, finally put a dart in him, and then we had to wait about 15 minutes just for the drug to take effect,” Ainsley said. Ravi then fell onto the blankets of the zookeepers who were waiting under the tree. “Ravi is doing really well,” Ainsley told the broadcaster. “Setting up at the animal health hospital where he will spend the next two or three days after the run. I just want to make sure he’s healthy and recovered from his adventure.” Ainsley said they discovered Ravi had escaped from his enclosure on Friday morning and initially focused their attention on the zoo, assuming he would be in one of the large trees there. It wasn’t until Sunday morning that a zookeeper spotted him in the fig tree in the nearby botanical park. Ainsley told the TV station that they will review the zoo footage to figure out how Ravi escaped. “Apparently he had just arrived and was testing his enclosure,” Ainsley said. “We know that red pandas are incredibly agile and known as escapees.”
