Supermodels Take It All Off to Expose Cruelty at Pata Department Store

What do you get when you have 10 naked models and a barren metal cage? A sexy new PETA ad that takes aim at Bangkok’s Pata Zoo—a cruel, cramped, concrete animal prison on the sixth and seventh floors of the Pata Department Store. Top models—including Patrick Ribbsaeter, Tanja Widing, and twins Irfan and Ihsan Setiarso—star in this hard-hitting new ad.

The conditions at the Pata Zoo are some of the worst that PETA has encountered at a menagerie. You can see photos from PETA’s repeated visits to the zoo here. But it doesn’t take a PETA investigation to see that conditions at the Pata Zoo are so cruel that most animals are driven insane from confinement. Visitors are saying the following about the Pata Zoo:

“There was no enrichment anywhere in Pata Zoo. None at all. … I do make the distinction between cage furniture, daily routine and enrichment. So many zoos make the mistake of lumping them altogether under the ‘enrichment’ heading but they are wrong. It is, as I see it, an excuse to cover over inadequate provision.”

“Its one of the most depressing sights and features I’ve seen in a mall. . . .  [The animals] are locked in concrete cells with no other stimulus than to pace to and fro for their entire existence.”

“It was when we arrived at the point [during a show at the zoo] of seeing one poor creature jumping through a hoop of knives that I thought I would quit the show. As it was it got stuck on the knives twice.”

“[S]lapdash holes like Pata zoo belong in the dark ages. … Three sun bears and an Asian black bear in a bare concrete enclosure with no den or climbing facilities. It could not have been more than ten feet square.”

You can help! Please ask both Thailand‘s Department of Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation and its Ministry of Tourism and Sports to demand that the Pata Zoo be closed for good!

Posted by Rochelle Regodon