Feds Hit Houston Interactive Aquarium With 15 Citations for Animals Denied Care, Filthy Enclosures
For Immediate Release:
June 10, 2026
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
A newly-released U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection report reveals that Houston Interactive Aquarium & Animal Preserve received a critical citation and 14 additional citations for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act after an armadillo’s enclosure flooded, nearly killing him. The April 16–17 inspection followed complaints submitted by PETA and anonymous individuals.
According to the report, contractors left a water line running in the armadillo’s enclosure, flooding it and forcing him to swim for an extended period. When he was finally found, he was unresponsive, cold, breathing abnormally, and his skin had turned purple, before a veterinarian was able to save him. The report also documents otters and kinkajous denied required rabies and distemper vaccines; food preparation and storage areas infested with fruit flies “too numerous to count,” rodent feces, and mold; expired and rotten food; enclosures covered in feces and animals swarmed by flies; and a Patagonian cavy with a wound that had never been reported to a veterinarian.
“Houston Interactive Aquarium is a house of horrors where animals are confined in disgusting enclosures and denied the most basic care, right down to bloody injuries that are completely ignored,” says PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Wildlife Rebecca Smudzinski. “PETA urges everyone to stay far away from this filthy operation and all roadside zoos, where suffering animals are exploited for human entertainment.”
Other incidents include failing to follow required enrichment plans for lemurs, a macaw named Sammie, and a cockatoo named Paloma; housing Sammie alone in a barren cage with no species-appropriate enrichment; and ignoring safety protocols during public encounters with two sloths, putting both humans and the sloths at risk. The operation was also cited after inspectors found an obviously distressed ostrich with injuries to her foot and were informed that she previously sustained a four-inch wound on her chest—neither of which were reported to a veterinarian until after the inspection.
Run by the notorious Covino family, Houston Interactive Aquarium & Animal Preserve has received 37 citations for alleged violations of federal animal welfare regulations in just the last four and a half years, including two critical citations in 2024 after 40 parakeets and an Eclectus parrot escaped from an enclosure and were never found.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
