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Mourning in Hellabrunn: Rwanda, Quodo, Quimbele and Rafiki died in an accident (archive image)
Photo: --- / dpa
The Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich mourns its meerkat colony.
The zoo announced on its website that all four meerkats were killed in an accident.
The animals slept in a self-dug cave and were apparently buried by the earth at night, it said.
They wouldn't have had a chance to get out of the burrow alive.
On Thursday morning, zookeepers found the meerkats Rwanda, Quodo, Quimbele and Rafiki dead.
"Even if such an accident in the natural habitat of the animals, the African savannah, can happen at any time, this complete loss of our meerkats is of course very sad for the Hellabrunn workforce as well as numerous zoo guests and animal sponsors", the zoological director Carsten Zehrer is quoted as saying.
Soil is checked
The four animals that died were each about five years old and had lived in Hellabrunn since the end of 2017, said a spokesman for the zoo.
The consistency of the soil in the meerkat enclosure is currently being checked, which will take some time.
After that, the zoo intends to settle new meerkats there.
ptz / dpa