Back in 2020, Phuket Zoo in Thailand closed its doors for good, following a decline in tourists due to the Covid-19 pandemic led to financial difficulties.
Concerns about the welfare of the animals housed in the zoo were raised after a video posted by YouTuber Minh Nyugen discovered that numerous tigers, alligators and bears had been left behind in squalid conditions.
Phuket Zoo was closed during the pandemic (YouTube/SeanKing5150)
“We got in there for a bit of a laugh, and thought we were going to come across some healthy animals,” he said in the video, adding that he’d found animals left in ‘disturbing’ conditions.
The following year, Reuters would publish a report stating that all of the remaining animals in the zoo had been rescued and taken to sanctuaries, with Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand stating that 11 tigers and two bears needed rescuing.
However, the story doesn’t end there, as another content creator would later visit the abandoned zoo in June 2023 and claim that various animals were still living in horrifying conditions.
In a two-part video titled ‘Abandoned Phuket Zoo FULL OF ALLIGATORS, And A TIGER, Left For Dead, The Phuket Zoo’, YouTuber Sean King, who regularly explores abandoned places, claimed that around ’12 crocodiles’ and a tiger were still in the zoo.
Crocodiles can be seen moving in the pond in one of the clips King shared (YouTube/SeanKing5150)
“A charity had removed all the animals and relocated them, the biggest rescue of its kind in its history,” he explained at the start of the video, before later being horrified to see around 12 crocodiles lurking in a pond.
King captured the moment he realised there was still animals in the zoo on camera, with one disturbing clip showing him counting the crocodiles. “No way, f**k! Mate, they are still in here, f**k! You’re having a f**king laugh. This is abandoned,” he said.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…nine. There is nine crocodiles. You’re having a laugh. Ten, eleven! Twelve! F**king hell. Get them out of here.”
Later on, King came across the tiger, before encountering another man (seemingly a security guard) on the seemingly abandoned grounds – and he was not happy to see the YouTuber wandering around.
In the clip, King can be heard raising the fact that there are ’12 crocodiles and a tiger’ in the abandoned zoo as the man locks his bike and calls the police to the scene.
King ends the video by stating that he was able to leave the zoo, adding in the comments that his discoveries had been reported to authorities. “I reported the tiger find to the charity and they told me there where 6 tigers still left there,” he replied to one user, suggesting that local charities were aware of the situation at the time.
