Undercover Investigation: Stressed, Cruelly-Treated Animals Trapped in Mall “Petting Zoos” Including Woodridge, NJ

SeaQuest is the source of hundreds of animal abuse complaints

Keeping wild animals in small, bare cages inside a retail shopping mall is absurd and abhorrently cruel. Yet this is the business model of SeaQuest, a for-profit chain of shopping mall-based wild animal petting zoos that has been plagued with controversies and cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture more than 110 times for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.  

SeaQuest peddles public interactions with wild animals such as sloths, sugar gliders, capybaras, coatimundis, kinkajous, wallabies and Bengal cats, as well as various fish, reptiles and birds. Customers grab, handle, pet and poke at these animals intermittently all day long. The animals have no access to sunlight or fresh air, no means to escape the loud, chaotic environment created by scores of adults and children coming in and out of SeaQuest facilities throughout the day, and no space or natural habitat in which to express their natural behaviors.  

Such an environment—at SeaQuest and other facilities like it—doesn’t teach people to respect and admire animals. It teaches them that wild animals are playthings to be toyed with for amusement. The Humane Society of the United States sent an undercover investigator to two SeaQuest locations to shine a spotlight on this cruelty and strengthen our broader push for an end to it. 

There is a an abusive #SeaQuest “zoo” in #Woodridge, New Jersey in addition to other locales 

Local animal activists are fighting to have this abomination CLOSED. We wish them luck!

ALDF, ASPCA, HSUS, BEST FRIENDS: PLEASE NO MORE ADDRESS LABELS?

In the last two weeks, I’ve received from animal rescue and welfare organizations to which I’ve donated, two sets of almost identical return address labels, a pocket calendar, and two membership cards. Among other things.

Please STOP sending these things. I don’t want them, I won’t use them, and the money you’re spending to send me what amount to tchothkes isn’t going where it should: to help homeless and abused animals.

I don’t want to be sarcastic, but I know where I live; I rarely if even mail anything anyway, I don’t need a calendar because I have a phone, and in fact I can enter appointments into that phone’s calendar; and there’s no one to even show a membership card to–my beloved Pittie Popeye only reads Croat. And he says “Prestanite slati sitnice!”

So please, when things are back to normal, I’ll start donating again. But I won’t if you don’t stop wasting my money on that stuff. You can even put your newsletters online for a fraction of what you’re spending to print and mail them. These things don’t help critters.

Thank you!

NJ Could Use HSUS’s Humane State Program!

HSUS has, by all accounts, a very thoughtful and effective communications program, Humane Statethat trains law enforcement, including prosecutors, judges, officers, and others, along with the shelter/rescue community to combat animal crimes and strengthen the shelters.  It’s really a road show that they’ve taken to several states and Puerto Rico.

Seems to me that New Jersey badly needs this kind of program.

Frustratingly, HSUS has no contact information for this program or for general requests, but its phone numbers are:

202-452-1100, or 866-720-2676, Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m ET

Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET