By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
Keeping wild animals in small, bare cages inside a retail shopping mall is absurd and abhorrently cruel. Yet this is the business model of SeaQuest, a for-profit chain of shopping mall-based wild animal petting zoos that has been plagued with controversies and cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture more than 110 times for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
SeaQuest peddles public interactions with wild animals such as sloths, sugar gliders, capybaras, coatimundis, kinkajous, wallabies and Bengal cats, as well as various fish, reptiles and birds. Customers grab, handle, pet and poke at these animals intermittently all day long. The animals have no access to sunlight or fresh air, no means to escape the loud, chaotic environment created by scores of adults and children coming in and out of SeaQuest facilities throughout the day, and no space or natural habitat in which to express their natural behaviors.
Such an environment—at SeaQuest and other facilities like it—doesn’t teach people to respect and admire animals. It teaches them that wild animals are playthings to be toyed with for amusement. The Humane Society of the United States sent an undercover investigator to two SeaQuest locations to shine a spotlight on this cruelty and strengthen our broader push for an end to it.
The HSUS investigation at SeaQuest facilities in Fort Worth, Texas and Las Vegas, Nevada, revealed a sad spectacle of hungry animals begging for food, humans getting injured, and even animals dying—all of it due to the cruel practice of selling public interactions with wild animals. Even animals clearly stressed by human contact or suffering from health issues were forced to participate in paid encounters. They were paraded out from the miserable, roach-infested living quarters where they spend their lives. Our investigator discovered a disturbing culture at SeaQuest in which the operator prioritized money-making interactions over providing basic animal care.
SeaQuest and places like it are part of a cruel industry that markets close encounters with wild animals and profits from the public’s poor understanding of how negative these experiences can be for everyone involved. It is, in short, a despicable business that hurts animals and puts employees, customers and other mall visitors at risk.
When wild animals are kept in impoverished environments, it is not unusual for them to develop stereotypic behaviors, or abnormal repetitive movements—a red flag that the animals are experiencing severe psychological distress. We saw this in some of the animals at SeaQuest—head-tossing in an Asian small-clawed otter, a self-mutilating cockatoo, and a three-banded armadillo running rapidly in endless circles in his cage, captured in this heartbreaking video.
There are so many wrongs associated with these commercial operations. In addition to a pervasive lack of appropriate veterinary care and ventilation and temperature control in the animal habitats, here are a few that stand out:
Trampled parakeets in the walk-through aviary: Staff told our investigator that at least three parakeets were accidentally stepped on and killed by customers—one wearing stiletto heels. A Fort Worth employee confided to the investigator that she suspected more parakeets were getting stepped on during public interactions than reports indicated.
Frantically begging Asian small-clawed otters: The otters were reduced to frantically begging for food from customers. They sometimes vocalized in distress and fought with each other over access to pieces of fish served by paying customers. A zoological expert who reviewed footage of the interactions found evident “significant psychological distress.”
Forced interactions: During a chaotic daily event called “wild hour” in the Las Vegas location, timid, reclusive, nocturnal animals such as a Virginia opossum and an armadillo were removed from their cages and placed in small plastic bowls on tables in bright, noisy areas where multiple people crowded around and paid to pet them. In the Fort Worth location, a visibly stressed kinkajou struggled violently as he was being forced into a dog harness so that customers could touch and hold him.
Out-of-control customers: In Las Vegas, an adult customer stuck his hand into an unmonitored fish tank, grabbed the tail of a bamboo shark and would not let go despite the shark becoming quickly distressed. The man started laughing when the shark began to struggle and thrash in the water. Another customer grabbed an iguana from an enclosure, placed the animal on his shoulders and began taking selfies until our investigator intervened.
Infestations and pervasive filth: The investigation also showed that the SeaQuest operations were infested with roaches, maggots, mites and other bugs. The facilities skipped proper sanitation of animal enclosures and food preparation areas in favor of spot cleaning so that staff had more time to conduct interactions. One child was afraid to enter the capybara enclosure for an interaction because so many roaches were visibly climbing around. Staff and the investigator found roaches in their coffee, climbing on walls, on their arms during lunch breaks and falling from the ceiling. The bedding in the corner of the wallaby’s enclosure was frequently covered with feces, hay and sand, and went unchanged for at least 23 days. A collection of dirty laundry remained piled on the washer, uncleaned, for the duration of one investigation. Eventually, it fell to the floor and also became infested with roaches. The investigation also documented animal food being stored alongside dead animals in a freezer as a makeshift mortuary.
Forgotten reptiles: SeaQuest treated the reptiles at its facilities with, at best, neglect. SeaQuest’s wildlife team manager discussed breeding reptiles and selling their offspring to offset the cost of purchasing the exotic reptiles. A ball python escaped an enclosure during our investigation, and Fort Worth staff told our investigator that this had happened before. Employees described another ball python who had previously escaped and was never found, and a bearded dragon who “started shrinking,” lost weight day after day, and then died. In Las Vegas, staff talked about six Caiman lizards who suffered prolapsed rectums after they defecated—a condition which should have been treated as a medical emergency. Instead, staff said they attempted to address the condition themselves.
In October 2024, while the HSUS investigation team was finalizing its investigative report, SeaQuest suddenly closed its Fort Worth location. While we celebrate the shuttering of this location, the troubling business model advanced by SeaQuest—setting up windowless wild animal petting zoos in retail shopping malls with vacant space—is a growing enterprise in the U.S. Other exhibitors are opening similar facilities across the country. More than 20 such locations have opened or announced new openings in recent years, while SeaQuest's Fort Worth location is only the fifth to have closed during the same period.
Raising awareness about these terrible facilities is essential. Earlier this year, ABC News aired an interview with us about some of the horrific incidents we’ve seen when wild animals are held captive and used for interactions with the public. Footage from the investigation at these two SeaQuest facilities speaks for itself: It shows why strengthening multi-agency collaboration in enforcement of the federal Animal Welfare Act is urgently needed. The Better Collaboration, Accountability, and Regulatory Enforcement (CARE) for Animals Act, which has bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress, would do just this.
While we conduct undercover investigations that expose what goes on behind the scenes, and push government agencies to enact and enforce laws, you can vow to never patronize these establishments and spread the word among your friends and family. You can also urge your representatives to support the Better CARE for Animals Act. In these ways, you can play a part in creating a more humane and compassionate world.
Kitty Block is CEO of the Humane Society of the United States
