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North Korea’s zoo features a smoking chimp and a dog trained to use an abacus

Ellsworth Toohey
Dec 14, 2025
∙ Paid

By Alex Kühni - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

The Korea Central Zoo in Pyongyang offers visitors a unique blend of wildlife and ideology. Among its 5,000 animals across 650 species, you can find Azalea, a cigarette-smoking chimpanzee, basketball-playing monkeys, doves incorporated into a figure skating routine, and a dog trained to manipulate an abacus. T…

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