After two men were recently arrested for an intrusion incident at the monkey enclosure housing the viral Japanese macaque Punch, the zoo has said it is considering a complete ban on photography and filming in the area.
The Ichikawa City Zoo in Chiba prefecture had already expanded the buffer zone around the enclosure and installed anti-intrusion netting following Sunday’s incident involving two men claiming to be US nationals.
The monkey attracted international attention for clinging to an orangutan plushie after being abandoned by his mother.
Police sent the two men to prosecutors on Tuesday. They were arrested on suspicion of forcible obstruction of business. One is a 24-year-old claiming to be a university student, and the other is a 27-year-old self-professed singer.
According to the allegations, the two men conspired to trespass into the zoo’s monkey enclosure at around 10.50am on Sunday. The younger man scaled a fence and dropped himself into the concrete enclosure dressed in a character costume while the older one filmed him with a smartphone from outside, police said.
Takashi Yasunaga, head of the Ichikawa municipal government’s zoological and botanical garden division, said the act endangered both the animal’s health and the safety of zookeepers. “We want to take various measures to ensure something like this never happens again,” he said.
Punch was born in July and was later given the orangutan plushie by zookeepers as a substitute for his mother. He began living with other monkeys in the enclosure in January, and the zoo has posted updates on his progress on social media, gaining attention online and drawing many visitors.
