British police need help finding a chimp in a top hat and other stolen taxidermied animals
Police in the UK are hoping the public can help them recover 18 valuable, and kind of creepy, stuffed animals that were taken from a taxidermy warehouse.
The Metropolitan Police shared a photo of the stolen items, including a dapper chimpanzee in a top hat, to their Twitter account on Wednesday.
Police say the animals -- including lions, a giraffe, a zebra, a sloth and more -- were nabbed during a March 1 robbery in Wandsworth.
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The thieves pulled up to the warehouse in a van, forced their way into the building and made off with several antiques and the animals.
The retail value of the items is around £100,000 ($142,000).
"The items they stole are of high value and are very distinctive," Detective Constable Edward Bird said. "I am appealing for anyone with information to contact police, in particular I would ask anyone who deals in such animals to be on the look-out and contact police immediately if you are offered any of the stolen items."
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According to police, the theft was well organized and it seems that the animals and the antiques were exactly what the thieves were after.
"This was not a random crime, the burglars had came prepared and well equipped," Bird said. This was a criminal enterprise and these thieves need to be stopped before they commit further crimes."
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Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
