Department store prison: No freedom from Pata Zoo for gorilla 'Little Lotus'

A female gorilla named Bua Noi (Little Lotus), kept at the Pata Zoo situated on the top floor of a shopping centre in Bangkok, remains in the Thailand facility even after the authorities confirmed that the zoo has broken several laws.

According to the Daily Mirror, Thai authorities have ordered Bua Noi and the other animals, including tigers, leopards, monkeys and apes, to be removed from the zoo.

The female gorilla has been held captive at the zoo, with other animals, for more than 27 years. The zoo denied that it had agreed to free the gorilla and give her to another zoo.

Animal rights activists, who have tried to shut down the horrendous facility, initiated a petition to collect more than 35,000 signatures calling for Bua Noi's release.

Her confinement has sparked controversy and protests by animal rights activists who say she needs better living conditions, and who are in general against the zoo's location in a shopping centre.

They have cited the jail-like conditions for species that are intelligent, social and active, and which in those confined conditions become bored, depressed, lonely, sad and dysfunctional.

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