Gorilla attacks man in brief zoo escape

A 177-kilogram gorilla grabbed low-hanging bamboo to scale a wall at a zoo in South Carolina, escaping his enclosure and tackling a worker before returning to his pen about five minutes later.

The gorilla at Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens ran into a pizza-stand employee who curled up and played dead to try to avoid further injuries during Friday's incident, officials said. The man was taken to hospital and released a short time later with cuts and bruises.

Zoo executive director Satch Krantz said the worker heard a strange sound, saw the gorilla outside the enclosure and turned to run.

"Then the gorilla did what gorillas do," he said.

The animal quickly closed the nine-metre gap between them and knocked the worker down. Two minutes later, the gorilla went over another wall and back into his enclosure.

"By then, the gorilla realised he was probably somewhere he shouldn't have been and wanted to go home," Krantz said.

The culprit is believed to be a 16-year-old western lowland gorilla named Mike, though zoo officials said they didn't know for certain. Three gorillas are in the exhibit.

Krantz praised the worker for doing the right thing. Neither he nor the man's company would identify him.

Zoo officials said they were alerted to the escape by a bird-keeper who heard the commotion and the gorilla pounding on his own chest. About 340 people were ushered to indoor exhibits or outside the gates for about 45 minutes after the gorilla escaped, zoo officials said.

Krantz said employees reacted by the book and that "it was an excellent job of preventing a more serious situation".

The gorilla got out about half an hour after the zoo opened at 9am. He returned to the gated sleeping area connected to his outdoor enclosure.

Animal keepers patrol each enclosure every morning before opening the zoo and nothing looked out of the ordinary in the exhibit, Krantz said.

Officials believe a powerful rainstorm on Thursday night swept a clump of bamboo over the top of the enclosure wall. Krantz showed reporters photos of a zoo worker using the slim bamboo reed to climb the wall and images of gorilla footprints on the wall.