Zoo-per wheeze

IT was tricky to determine which side of the bars housed the animals, as Bioparc Fuengirola was packed to the rafters on Sunday June 19, with visitors able to pay whatever they deemed appropriate based on their satisfaction, above a minimum price of €3 per person.

The pilot scheme was cooked up by park bosses as a means to assess whether the attraction’s high rating on social media, where it is among the world’s top-rated zoos, is true or not.

Visitors were thus handed a short feedback questionnaire to be filled in at the end of their visit, with ‘pink points’ for payment and submission of the survey scattered around the park.

All profits from the day are to be donated to the Bioparc Foundation, which supports 25 conservation projects around the planet aiming to protect a range of species, from mountain gorillas to komodo dragons.

The event proved extremely popular, although regular visitors would have been disappointed at the sheer volume of people, with a number seen behaving inappropriately towards the animals, while pushing and shoving was rife as scrums formed in front of the more popular exhibits.