Teach The Children

There's a rule in journalism that three of anything is a trend. It's taken a while, but we can now officially designate the following as a trend in bad animal behavior: Zoo animals eating other zoo animals in front of a crowd of children.

In October 2010 we learned of this incident:

A horrified 8-year-old boy watched as an alligator ate the pet turtle he'd just donated to a Panhandle aquarium.

Brenda Guthrie and her 8-year-old son Colton witnessed Tomalina’s death as the red-eared slider disappeared into the alligator’s jaws at the Gulfarium. When the two looked away from the sight, she said they could hear the crunching of the turtle’s shell.

“He was jumping up and down screaming,” Guthrie said of her son’s reaction. “He was shouting, ‘Oh no alligator, let it go.’”