Somebody is beheading the Frankfurt Zoo's flamingos

Somebody is beheading the Frankfurt Zoo&#039;s flamingos

(Image credit: Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

People do all kinds of stupid, crazy things, but what kind of a monster sneaks into a zoo and beheads sleeping flamingos? Officials at Germany's Frankfurt Zoo want to know rather urgently, after discovering 15 dead Chilean flamingos late last week, several of them with severed necks. The attacks happened Thursday and Friday nights, and police and zookeepers are flummoxed. Three flamingos were killed at the same zoo in 2007, and that case was never solved.

"Who would do such a thing?" asked Germany's Die Welt on Monday. "Psychopaths? Was it a completely out-of-order test of courage among young people? Or was it Satanists?" The stab wounds in some birds point to a human culprit, though zoo director Manfred Niekisch says bite marks suggest foxes may have been involved — or bitten the animals after they were already dead. An oddly chilling factoid from the Associated Press: "Flamingos don't normally cry for help when attacked." --Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.