Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for the birds of Kunming, this weekend it was revealed that two peacocks are believed to have died from shock after being picked up by Chinese tourists for pictures and having their feathers plucked during the CNY rush. 
 
 According to Sina, the Yunnan Wild Animal Park is home to some 6,800 peacocks. One area of the zoo allows tourists to roam around an area with hundreds of peacocks, where they can feed the birds and take pictures of them. 
 
 Photos hit the web over the weekend showing some tourists taking this freedom too far to the shock and dismay of netizens across China. The zoo has since confirmed the deaths of two of its peacocks during the Spring Festival holiday. While investigations are still underway, officials believe that they had been killed by the "violent behavior" of tourists holding the birds too tightly. 
 
 Netizens have called for severe punishment against the tourists, even asking for them to suffer the same awful fate as the peacocks. 
 
 "This woman should have all her hairs plucked out one by one, so she can see how it feels," commented one netizen. 
 
 [Images via Sina] 

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 Two peacocks died at a zoo in southwest China after visitors who were trying to take photos picked up the birds and roughly handled them. 
 
 According to reports, visitors to the Yunnan Wild Animal Park grabbed the birds for selfies, and violently plucked out their feathers. 
 
 Images of the visitors holding the birds emerged on Weibo, after another visitor posted them online. 
 
 Another image posted of the visitors. Image: weibo 
 
 The incident happened on Feb. 12, the zoo confirmed on Sunday. A spokesperson for the Zoo, Mr. Bai, told the Huaxi Metropolis Daily that something like this has never happened at the zoo before, but workers had expressly told visitors not to touch the peacocks. 
 
 While peacocks are not likely to approach people, the visitors had managed to capture the birds by luring them with food and grabbing them by their long tails, he said. 
 
 Zookeepers rushed to stop the visitors when they saw them hugging the peacocks, but one of the birds, a gorgeous 5-year-old male, died of fright within half an hour of being grabbed. 
 
 The zoo hasn't said if it will press charges against the visitors who manhandled the birds. 
 
 Dr. Li, a veterinarian with the Kunming East Hospital, told City Times that peacocks can indeed be frightened to death, and that they can suffer heart attacks if exposed to large shocks. Other timid animals like rabbits are also similarly fragile, Li said. 
 
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 The “violent behaviour” of Chinese tourists has led to the death of two peacocks at a city zoo, mainland media reports. 
 
 The two birds are believed to have died from shock after visitors picked them up to pose with them in photographs and plucked out their feathers at Yunnan Zoo – also known as Yunnan Wild Animal Park – in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province, the newspaper WCC Daily reported on Sunday. 
 
 Photographs taken by one visitor at the zoo, which were circulated online, show tourists holding up a peacock as they pose for photographs. 
 
 The newspaper report said the zoo had confirmed two peacocks had died. 
 
 The report also said that some visitors had plucked out the feathers of the peacocks. 
 
 Yunnan Zoo confirmed that one of its peacocks had died on February 12 – during Lunar New Year – as a result of the “violent behaviour” of tourists. 
 
 Although the cause of this peacock’s death was still under investigation, park officials said they believed they it had died because of shock after being held forcefully by visitors. 
 
 The report had attracted more than 20,000 comments by Monday morning, many of which condemned the actions of the tourists and also asked what action the zoo should take. 
 
 “Without the zoo’s permission, who is allowed to hold the peacocks for photos?” said one person in a post on Tencent’s weibo social media website. “[People] have to pay to take intimate photos with animals!” 
 
 Another person wrote: “Why are tourists allowed to have close contact with the wild animals in the zoo?” 
 
 A third person wrote: “China must set up a database and prevent such low-quality visitors from entering tourist attractions.” 
 
 According to the zoo’s website, the park covers an area of 1,133 hectares. 
 
 Its more than 10,000 wild animals include about 200 different species, including pandas, rhinoceros, and white tigers. 
 
 The entry fee to the park for adults is 80 yuan (HK$95).
– We just don't learn, do we? Shortly after beachgoers in Argentina killed a baby dolphin, tourists in China are accused of killing two peacocks in an attempt to snap a selfie. Officials say the visitors were told not to touch the animals at Yunnan Zoo in Kunming on Feb. 12 but grabbed two peacocks anyway after luring them with food, per Mashable and the South China Morning Post. One photo shows a man gripping a peacock tightly against his body while a woman appears to pet the animal and a boy grabs its tail feathers. Zoo officials say the animals had feathers torn out in an area of the zoo where visitors can get close to hundreds of peacocks, per Shanghaiist. The deaths—including a 5-year-old male bird—are being investigated; officials believe the animals died of shock as a result of the "violent behavior" of tourists. A vet confirms peacocks can die of fright and may suffer heart attacks over such shocks, per Mashable. It isn't clear if the zoo will press charges. (This guy just took a selfie with a shark.)