A crowd of around a hundred protesters gathered outside the Belvedere Zoo in Tunis March 5. A woman in a baseball hat affixed with small black cat ears paced in front of the group, repeatedly shouting, “Stop abusing animals in Tunisia!” An image of a panda’s face adorned her sweatshirt. Behind her, a man held up a pool float in the shape of a crocodile, an inflatable toy as an homage to a crocodile who was stoned to death at the zoo Feb. 28.
“A group of visitors to the zoo threw stones at the head of a crocodile, causing internal hemorrhaging that killed it,” the Tunisian municipality announced on its Facebook page that day. A gory picture of the crocodile, its head bloody and battered, accompanied the text.