This Might Look A Bit Like A Pantomime,

someone dressed as a zebra, 

fooling zoo officials as he makes its break for freedom, until he is caught, but make believe escapes like this are often staged in Japan,

and here is a escaped lion,

and here is my favourite, the escaped polar bear, it looks just so funny as the escaped bears head appears above the rocks!

this one using a leopard, and that is the animal that spawned these recapturing events, July 25th 1936 a black panther, well it is similar to a leopard, escaped from its cage during the night, the panther had just arrived from Thailand 3 months earlier and was known for its aggressive behaviour,

the headline reads, “Oh No! ‘Jungle Gang Member’ Escapes” the leopard had escaped into the sewer, now a cunning plan was needed, they came up with a plan called the “tokoroten strategy” which involved going into the sewer with a shield the size of the passageway and slowly inching forward to squeeze the panther out. A cage would be placed over the manhole cover where the animal was, but there was a problem, a distinct lack of volunteers! finally a man named Kunitaro Harada, who worked in the zoo’s boiler room, volunteered. A former sumo wrestler, Harada was a burly man who said he was ready to take on the panther 1-on-1 but later admitted in an interview that he was terrified, but he succeeded,

the headline reads “A Surrender After Tokoroten Strategy!” and since then Japanese animal escape drills, have been performed at zoos in Japan, so many thanks to Kunitaro Harada for laying the foundation work for us to enjoy Japanese zoo animal captures, I guess it is better than just shooting dead the escaped animal instead of tranquilising it, who would be so cruel as to kill it?