By HEATHER DOCKRAY From Mashable

It can be so tempting to give cute animals human clothes, but sometimes we take it too far.

At the Calgary Zoo last month, two zoo employees thought it’d be fun to give one of their otters, Logan, a pair of pants. Not too long after, the pants, which zoo officials called an “unauthorized employment item,” became tangled in the otter’s fur. The otter subsequently drowned.

A zoo employee reportedly saw Logan struggling in the water and jumped in to save him. But it was too late for the 12-year-old creature.

“Our animal care protocols are among the most stringent in the industry and must be followed. We will be reinforcing our protocols with every member of our animal care staff to prevent an incident like this from ever happening again,” zoo curator, Colleen Baird, said in a statement.

“This error is simply unacceptable,” Baird said.

This isn’t the first time the Calgary Zoo has courted controversy or experienced a freak death. In 2009, a gorilla keeper accidentally left a knife in the gorilla cage. One of the gorillas then appeared to threaten the female gorilla, before the weapon was finally removed.

IMAGE: HEIKE SCHEFFLER/AP IMAGES

A 2010 audit prompted by the death of a capybara killed by a hydraulic door a year prior found that there had been several deaths caused by zookeeper errors or problems with design at the zoo. A spider monkey died from frostbite after being left outside in the cold and groups of bats died after hitting piano wire that was added for an exhibit, the audit found. In 2013, a female penguin named Fiona swallowed a foot-long stick in her exhibit. She later died from internal bleeding.

[h/t CBC]

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