Lehe Ledu Zoo: Riding in a Cage While Tigers Roam in Chongqing

Lehe Ledu's Caged-Vehicle Zoo Experience

Photo: CEN

Lehe Ledu Wildlife Zoo in Chongqing, south-west China, flips the usual zoo arrangement. Instead of looking at big cats through bars, visitors sit inside a barred cage bolted onto the back of a truck, and the truck is driven through the predators' enclosures. Raw meat is tied to the outside of the cage, so lions, tigers and bears climb up the sides to reach it, sometimes inches from the passengers' faces.

The ride launched around the end of 2014 and became a viral story in January 2015. More than ten years later it still circulates online, often with the claim that "humans are caged while animals roam free". That claim is broadly true, and the fact-checking organisation Africa Check confirmed in 2020 that the zoo really does run tours this way. What the viral version leaves out is just as interesting: how the experience works, what it does and doesn't say about animal welfare, and why the "free roaming" label needs some care.

How the caged-truck tour works

The setup is simple. A small lorry carries a box made of steel mesh and bars, large enough for a group of standing or seated passengers. Keepers fasten chunks of meat to the outside of the mesh. As the truck rolls slowly through the carnivore areas, the animals follow the smell, walk alongside, and often rear up on their hind legs to pull at the food.

Visitors are allowed to pass small pieces of meat through gaps in the cage, which is what draws the cats so close. Early reports said tickets sold out for months after the tours opened. Zoo staff told the press that passengers are warned to keep their fingers and hands inside the bars at all times.

A white lion and a tiger work at the meat tied to the side of the caged truck while a second tiger waits on the road. Photo: CEN

According to reports at the time, the zoo describes more than 30 species in its collection. The tours focus on the animals people most want to see up close: tigers (including white tigers), lions, white lions and Asiatic black bears.

Why the zoo says it built a ride like this

The marketing pitch was about thrill rather than education. A spokeswoman quoted in the British press as Chan Liang said the idea was to let visitors feel the thrill of being stalked and attacked by the big cats, without the risk. A Hangzhou travel agency later described the concept to Africa Check as "the flip side of a zoo".

The appeal is easy to understand. In a conventional zoo, big cats often sleep through the day and keep their distance. Food on the bars changes that instantly: the animals become active, climb and show their size and strength. For a few minutes, a visitor gets a close, noisy, very physical encounter that no glass window can match.

A tiger stands on its hind legs against the side of a tour bus, showing just how tall a big cat is when it stretches up. Photo: CEN

Is it really "animals free, humans caged"?

Only partly. The animals are not in small pens, but they are still inside fenced enclosures within a commercial park. "Free roaming" here means a larger fenced area that vehicles drive through, which is the same basic model as a safari park.

Drive-through parks are not new. A lion drive-through opened at Tama Zoological Park in Tokyo in 1963, and the first drive-through safari park outside Africa opened at Longleat in England in 1966. China built several large safari parks from the 1990s onwards, in cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou. What made Lehe Ledu stand out was not the open enclosure but the combination of an open-sided cage and meat used to bring the animals right onto the vehicle.

Two white lions and a tiger gather behind the truck, drawn by food fastened to the mesh. Photo: CEN

The welfare and safety questions critics raise

Critics quoted in 2015 called the short gap between claws and fingers an accident waiting to happen. The cage protects people from a full attack, but bars with openings big enough to pass food through are also big enough for a paw or a finger. That is why the hands-inside rule matters so much.

Animal-welfare questions are harder to judge from photos. A few points are worth keeping in mind:

Feeding for show. Using food to make predators perform on cue can teach them to associate vehicles and people with meals, which can make them pushier and harder to manage.
Space is not the same as good care. A big enclosure looks better than a small cage, but welfare also depends on diet, veterinary care, group size, shelter and how often animals are disturbed.
Breeding and white animals. White tigers and white lions are popular with visitors, but they are colour variants usually produced through selective breeding in captivity rather than conservation programmes.

None of this proves the animals at Lehe Ledu are badly treated, and no independent welfare assessment of the park is publicly available in English. It simply means the striking image of people in a cage does not, on its own, answer whether the animals are well cared for.

An Asiatic black bear reaches up to the window of a tour bus. Bears are as strong and agile as the cats and get the same food lure. Photo: CEN

Costa Rica and the "end of zoos" claim

Many shares of this story say Costa Rica was closing all of its zoos. That needs a correction. In 2013 the Costa Rican government announced it would close its two state-run zoos, Simón Bolívar Zoo and the Santa Ana Conservation Center, both in San José. Legal disputes delayed the plan for about eleven years. The closure finally took effect in May 2024, when 287 animals were moved to a wildlife rescue centre to be assessed. According to Born Free, 18 private zoos remained legally allowed to operate.

So Costa Rica did not close every zoo, and its approach is quite different from Lehe Ledu's. The Costa Rican move pushes towards rescue, rehabilitation and protecting animals in their natural habitat. Lehe Ledu is a commercial attraction built around close-contact feeding.

A white lion presses against a bus window while another climbs behind it. Moments like this are the reason the ride became famous, and the reason critics worry about it. Photo: CEN

If you want close wildlife encounters done well

If the idea of seeing predators up close appeals to you, a few questions help separate responsible operators from risky ones:

Is the facility accredited by a recognised zoo or sanctuary association, and does it publish its welfare standards?
Are animals fed for their health on a schedule, or used as bait to make them perform for tourists?
Does the park breed animals mainly for display, such as white tigers, or take part in genuine conservation or rescue work?
Are visitors kept at a distance that protects both sides, with no hands-on contact with big cats?

The best experiences often involve the least interference: a well-run safari park, a true sanctuary, or a guided trip to see wild animals in their own habitat. Watching a tiger walk away into the grass is less dramatic than one hanging off a truck, but it tells you far more about how the animal actually lives.

Sources: Africa Check: Yes, zoo in China puts people in cages while animals roam free; Amusing Planet, January 2015; Wikipedia: Safari park; Born Free: Costa Rica closes state zoos (May 2024); photos by CEN, story first shared by True Activist.

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