Ravi the red panda’s escape: What he might have been up to during his time on the run

Keepers are sifting through hours of CCTV footage to work out how a red panda breached two security fences at Adelaide Zoo. They’ve revealed what he was up to during his time on the run.

Investigations are under way to trace the steps of Ravi the agile red panda to uncover how he breached a specially designed enclosure and second perimeter fence at Adelaide Zoo.

Director of the Adelaide Zoo Dr Phil Ainsley said Ravi, 7, was probably sleeping in a Moreton Bay fig tree at Botanic Park for most of his two days on the run.

It was in the early hours of Friday morning that a security officer noticed Ravi, who only arrived in Adelaide last Tuesday from Australia Zoo, was missing from his enclosure.

“Not knowing where an animal is at any particular time is never ideal but as soon as we knew the focus was, let’s go do a search of the zoo,” Dr Ainsley said.

He said there were no serious concerns that Ravi had strayed too far from his new home, as red pandas sleep for up to 16 hours in a day and he was likely to be wherever he could find food easily.

Red panda Ravi checks out his enclosure last week after moving from the Australia Zoo . Picture: Zoos SA

“They will sleep probably six to eight hours a day quite comfortably … if you’re thinking about the metabolism of a giant panda, eating bamboo is not a high-nutrition food, so they spend lots of time eating with not a lot of energy,” he said.

“There’s different activity periods during the night; they may spend two-thirds of their day resting and curled up in a ball.”

Fortunately, Dr Ainsley’s hypothesis was right. A security guard on a routine check found Ravi curled up in a tree about 300m from the Adelaide Zoo in Botanic Park on Sunday morning.

Dr Ainsley said there were a number of reasons why Ravi was shot with a tranquilliser dart to get him out of the tree on Sunday.

“Being outside of the zoo there’s a number of circumstances that come into play that we don’t have in the zoo… for example there’s other species in Botanic Park, there’s foxes and cats and dogs,” he said.

“There’s also the risk that if he had come down from the tree that would’ve been harder to contain him and obviously Botanic Park is a really big space.”

Ravi the escaped red panda being caught by Adelaide Zoo staff as he fell from a tree in Botanic Park, Adelaide. Picture: Zoos SA

On Monday keepers were tasked with combing through hours of CCTV footage to piece together how Ravi breached his enclosure and a further security fence.

“We know that they’re very agile and unfortunately, red pandas in zoo settings are known escapologists, so it’s definitely something the (new) exhibit was designed with in mind,” Dr Ainsley said.

“And then also trying to get an understanding of how he breached our main perimeter of fence, because that’s obviously something that’s our secondary buffer, and that normally would contain an animal that’s escaped.”

Dr Phil Ainsley from Adelaide Zoo speaks to media in Botanic Park, Adelaide, Kaurna Yarta, Sunday, August 14. (The Advertiser/ Morgan Sette)

The red panda exhibit was only expanded at the start of the year, but Dr Ainsley said the area Ravi escaped from had existed at the zoo since 2009.

The cheeky panda was flown from Australia Zoo as an approved breeding partner for Mishry, who came to Adelaide Zoo from Sydney’s Taronga Zoo at the beginning of the year.

“We’ve had no indication that there’s any risk of her finding her way out, but where he was housed, in the second half of the habitat, at the moment no panda will go into that until we’ve undertaken that review,” he said.

While on his adventure, Ravi lost 1kg, which is about a fifth of his body weight.

He is now at the animal hospital where he is resting, rehydrating, and eating his favourite snacks of sweet corn, dried figs and bamboo.