After the fire in the Krefeld Zoo on New Year's Eve, a number of conspiracy theories are now gathering.
Many bad things that happen seem absolutely pointless to us. This also includes the fire in the monkey house at Krefeld Zoo, in which almost all of the animals died. And if there is no real reason for a tragic event, then a magnifying glass is used to look for reasons, which then leads to the discovery of apparent inconsistencies and ultimately entire conspiracy theories arise.
In particular, a certain text that asks a lot of questions about the accident is spreading on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1461601940673907&set=a.109930125841102&type=3
The text is introduced with “ monkey house fire or monkey circus ” and begins as follows:
“The absurdities I have read about among my fellow human beings over the last two days are truly unbelievable. When the media reports something forcefully and repeats it often enough, many people believe any crap!”
The text strongly doubts the official version of the fire based on several aspects. Below we would like to look at the individual arguments.
The dry leaves on the roof
The text says:
“Apparently dry leaves lying on the roof caught fire - it was frosty, foggy and wet on New Year's Eve. There is also a sloping gable roof. Dry leaves collected in one place on this sloping roof without being carried away by a little wind and that's exactly where the sky lantern flew into. There are coincidences…”
On December 31st it was mostly sunny or overcast in Krefeld, with thick fog in the morning. There was only light wind all day. On New Year's Eve there was high humidity and light winds, and fog didn't appear until around 1 a.m.

However, whether leaves on the roof promoted the fire or whether the Plexiglas burned directly is still the subject of investigations . Foliage as a fire promoter has so far only been viewed as a possibility , but is not an established fact.
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The plexiglass roof
The text says:
“The plexiglass roof is said to have caught fire, which would have caused the monkey house to burn down - If you take a closer look at the fire behavior of plexiglass panes, you will see that they are flame-retardant and do not burn dripping. There are coincidences…”
The text also refers to a page that the fire behavior of Plexiglas , according to which Plexiglas is normally to flame retardant, burns with almost no smoke, does not drip and does not produce acutely toxic smoke gases.
According to Chief Inspector Gerd Hoppmann, the police were able to use the zoo's surveillance cameras to reconstruct that one of the sky lanterns landed on the roof of the monkey enclosure and started the fire, which spread rapidly. However, the real question is why a fire broke out so quickly.
There can be various reasons for this, ranging from the protective films that may have been used and the many plastic elements over the already mentioned leaves, which also accumulated heavily on other buildings in the zoo, to chemical interactions between different burning materials. That's why the police are currently checking invoices, delivery notes and other information about the material, and practical fire investigations are also being carried out.
Smoke detectors and sprinkler systems
The text says:
“Smoke alarms, sprinkler systems? – according to the media, there were none… Now be honest, you know the German “offices”. Do you seriously believe that this is possible in a public building with public access? There are coincidences…”
, spokesman for the Association of Fire Departments in North Rhine-Westphalia and formerly responsible for fire protection at the Wuppertal Zoo, says For example, new buildings would be divided into fire compartments, but the monkey house in the Krefeld Zoo dates from 1975. In addition, fire detectors in such buildings are usually unusable because dust and moisture trigger false alarms too often.
In general, fire protection in zoos is always difficult: Although the fire department can always examine the materials for flammability, direct alarm and extinguishing methods are technically very difficult. And even if there were a fire alarm, as Thomas Wilms, director of the Münster All-Weather Zoo, adds , you can't just “take a gorilla by the hand” if there is a fire. You can't quickly calm panicked animals with a tranquilizer gun and take them out. In this respect, there will always be a residual technical risk of fires in zoos.
Humidity
The text says:
“Monkey house has at least 70% humidity. – In rooms with high humidity everything is a little damp, even straw. This monkey house apparently had a dry bale of straw lying right under the fire, which was then hit by the burning, non-dripping Plexiglas pane. There are coincidences…”
These are pure conclusions: “ When the humidity is high, it is damp and the straw is damp .” the air humidity alone says nothing about the soil or material moisture, and therefore nothing about the moisture of the straw. If it was well cared for, it would probably have been mostly dry anyway, as damp straw gets moldy all too quickly and would endanger the health of the animals.
The sky lanterns
The text says:
“Sky lanterns – are available with either fuel paste or tea lights… what happens to a tea light if it tips ever so slightly? That's right, the wax extinguishes the candle! What happens as soon as wind hits the tea light? That's right, it goes out! How long does the fuel paste burn? Correct, max. 5-10 minutes! How far can sky lanterns fly during this time? Good question! Are sky lanterns highly flammable? That’s right, “light as a feather lucky lantern made of rice paper, flame retardant”! Coincidences upon coincidences…”
In the text there is a link to a lucky lantern, the description states that it is flame-retardant.
The women who released the sky lanterns mentioned that they had purchased them online. The brand is not known, but one thing is clear: sky lanterns available on the Internet are not operated with tea lights, but with fuel, such as fuel paste. In this respect, the tealight argument is wrong; tealights can only be found in self-made sky lanterns.
The wind speed on New Year's Eve was 7 km/h to 9 km/h ( 2 Beaufort ). The burning time of a sky lantern is 5 – 20 minutes, depending on its size So even at 7 km/h with a burning time of 5 minutes, a lantern flies almost 600 meters (7000 / 60 * 5 = 583.3), at an average of 8 km/h and a burning time of 10 minutes even over 1.3 kilometers .
Additionally, it was never stated that the material of the lantern itself burned and then ignited the roof, although this is also possible if the lantern landed in such a way that the material came into direct contact with the flame long enough.
The security guards
The text says:
“New Year’s fireworks and no one with the animals? – Normally the full program is run in terms of staff on New Year's Eve. But in Krefeld the zoo is closed normally in the evening and the animals are left alone? Is this what caring looks like? They probably just forgot that it was New Year's Eve, they wouldn't do something like that! There are coincidences…”
The zoo covers an area of 14 hectares, and in fact the zoo also has a security guard, as Krefeld Zoo's press spokeswoman Petra Schwinn emphasizes , but they cannot be present everywhere at the same time.
To clarify: 14 hectares is roughly the area of 19.6 football fields . As usual, there was a lot of noise on New Year's Eve and there were lights everywhere. Plus, as mentioned above, Plexiglas produces almost no smoke at all. This meant that it was very difficult or impossible for the security guards to see the fire unless they were in the immediate vicinity of the monkey house.
In the further course of the text, various possible reasons for an intended fire are given (insurance fraud, political motives), some of which drift into other conspiracy theories (perpetrators are not real, faked in order to collect money “like in Notre Dame”, to “Deep State “to finance”).
Last but not least, people mock that there are no corpses to see...
The dead animals
The text says:
“Monkeys – Have any of you seen a picture of the dead monkeys? Or are we just told that? (…) Who tells us that the animals were not removed beforehand and sold to other zoos abroad? After all, there were extremely rare and valuable animals there…”
According to the claim, all the animals there were removed in a cloak and dagger operation.
Reason: There were no official photos of the bodies. With such a callous attitude towards death, one can in principle question every single car accident and murder:
“ There are no photos of the victims? Then it was a false flag operation! “
We won't include or link any pictures at this point (everyone can look for them themselves if they want), but there is a good reason why no pictures of the dead animals are published: burned monkeys look very similar to burned people in appearance and posture.
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Conclusion
In principle, the text assumes that there is a large conspiracy in Krefeld, in which not only all employees of the zoo are involved, but also the police, possibly local politicians and the three women who are now receiving death threats.
Such a conspiracy seems more likely to some people than what actually happened: a chain of unfortunate circumstances that led to a tragic accident.
Such accidents happen almost every day. Some things get into the international press, some are only reported locally.
But a large conspiracy is rarely the background.
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1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

