Imagine being bought on a whim for entertainment. Imagine being paraded in an enclosed space for your billionaire owner's friends, only to be abandoned when he no longer had use of you, left to rot in the small confines of your cage.

There is no food. There is no water. There is no space to live.

Welcome Gyumri's mini zoo, the worst place on earth. 

With some of the animals being temporarily taken in by local zoos, there remain 3 lions, 2 bears and 2 guinea pigs. They have been left for so long they now display signs of madness caused by their unnatural existence.

As the civic authorities refuse to take on any responsibility for them, their welfare is dependent on an elderly couple who happened to chance on them one day. Hovhamnes and Alvina Madoyan are struggling to keep the animals alive on slaughterhouse scraps and anything scavenged from the woods.

Hovhamnes said: "'I lost my job. I had nothing, my wife and I were walking by the deserted zoo when we heard these terrible cries of animals in torment. We came in to see the lioness and her cub literally frothing at the mouths from lack of water. My wife and I can't bear to see God's creatures in pain. We fetched water from them and then organised some meat from a local slaughterman. That is how we scrape by, feeding them what we can muster. It is the same for the bears. We moved into an old shed near the lion enclosure to be near to them five months ago."

Help bring the plight of these animals to the international organisations who have the resources and influence to rescue them. No living thing should be made to suffer in this terrible way.