A missing clouded leopard shut down the Dallas Zoo on Friday as police helped search for the animal that officials described as not dangerous and likely hiding somewhere on the zoo grounds.
The small cat weighs about 20-25 pounds (9-11 kilograms), said Harrison Edell, executive vice president of animal care and conservation at the Dallas Zoo. The search inside Texas' largest zoo was focused on scouring trees, which Edell said clouded leopards like to climb.
The zoo tweeted that the missing cat, named Nova, was a “serious situation,” but Edell said the animal posed no threat to humans.
“If anything, she's real nervous and afraid of people,” Edell said.
He did not say how the animal escaped its enclosure. Another clouded leopard at the zoo, Nova's sister, was still in its habitat, Edell said.
Animals have escaped enclosures from the Dallas Zoo before. Most notably was in 2004, when a 340-pound (154-kilogram) gorilla named Jabari jumped over a wall and went on a 40-minute rampage that injured three people before police shot and killed the animal.
Thousands of Marines backed by advanced U.S. fighter jets and warships are slowly building up a presence in the Persian Gulf. It’s a sign that while America’s wars in the region may be finished, its conflict with Iran over its advancing nuclear program continues to worsen, with no solutions in sight.
The fate of an American nurse and her daughter kidnapped in Haiti last week remains unknown Tuesday as the U.S. State Department refused to say whether the abductors made demands.
Moments after two children were playing with toy guns, one of the children picked up a real rifle in a western Alaska home and fatally shot the other child, authorities said.
One good thing: Pup reunited with owner.
More than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, a lawyer for her descendants said they have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company that they accused of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system.
Racing will resume at Churchill Downs in September.
Parents and faith leaders have sued to stop Oklahoma from creating what would be the first religious public charter school in the nation.
Memphis police say they arrested an armed suspect who brought a gun to a local Hebrew school on Monday.
Tuesday marks the final day of testimony before a judge will determine whether Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley receives life in prison.
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