This bothers me. I can’t come up with a good reason for this to be happening to zoos (of all places). There have been a good amount of zoos that have had bomb threats or active shooter threats called in this month in the USA. The press is referring to most of these as "swatting". I didn’t know about these threats until today when I heard some Texas zoos had it happen.

My wife thinks it is a distraction to allow someone/some group to do something else, or to test the police/fire response time. That’s plausible, but why zoos? I would expect if some group wanted to test response times they would call in threats to airports, major hotels, state capital offices, or other government buildings. I can’t see how a response to a zoo would prove much.

My theory was PETA or Code Pink – or some adjacent group – is doing this to call attention to the confinement of animals for the pleasure of humans. Sounds like something they would do – but I could be wrong. However, the timing of this is suspicious to me since it is getting closer to July 4th. What if this isn’t a “see how long it takes for a response” thing, but a “see how many agencies and people respond” thing?

What if the whole idea is to do this during the America 250 celebrations on the 4th, get police and fire to respond to somewhere else (like the zoos), and then take advantage of the smaller numbers of police/fire actually protecting the people at the celebrations?

Google says the National Zoo in DC was also swatted, but I can’t find an article on that one. I would expect that one to be a target if whoever is doing this wants to thin the police/fire presence during the ceremonies on the Mall on July 4th. I hope I’m wrong.

Does anyone else have any theories? This could be bad.

Here are a few links:

• https://apnews.com/article/zoo-swatting-threats-04689c0a6ea174a46132c6c686db00e4
• https://www.kxii.com/2026/05/17/gainesville-zoo-evacuated-after-bomb-threat-part-nationwide-swatting-trend/
• https://www.kltv.com/2026/05/17/anonymous-bomb-threat-prompts-evacuation-closure-caldwell-zoo/
• https://www.kten.com/news/police-respond-to-bomb-threat-at-frank-buck-zoo/article_09487f93-fa9c-4759-b0af-c2d7efc61998.html
• https://ktxs.com/news/local/abilene-zoo-closes-after-receiving-bomb-threat
• https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2026/05/04/columbus-zoo-offering-refunds-ticket-transfers-after-swatting-call-bomb-threat-evacuation/89928961007/