Brett Milam, and Bob Strickley

Cincinnati

The Twitter account of Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden director Thane Maynard appeared to have been hacked late Saturday night.

While the account is unverified by Twitter, @ThaneMaynard has posted multiple posts pertaining to the zoo and the handle is listed in his profile on the zoo's website.

Beginning just before 11 p.m. Saturday night, the account tweeted a popular and lewd hashtag regarding the gorilla that was killed earlier this summer by Cincinnati Zoo officials.

Also used by the account after the apparent hack was the popular Harambe hashtag #justiceforharambe along with the handle @prom, appearing to claim the hack.

Maynard's account photo was changed to a picture of the deceased gorilla.

When direct-messaged by an Enquirer reporter on Twitter asking the reason behind the apparent hack, the account @prom replied, "not sure, thought it would be funny I guess."

The hacker said a week ago the Cincinnati Zoo website had been "owned by Poodlecorp." Poodlecorp is the hacking group that made news for trying to take down Pokémon Go and the zoo website did have some odd code on its Maynard page as of 3 p.m.

Zoo officials could not immediately be reached to confirm if the page had been compromised.

"I have not been to the zoo," the @prom account said. "And I don't worry about legal consequences at all."

The user also said they followed the Harambe stuff a lot and that "the meme is hilarious though."

Thane Maynard's account was recovered Sunday evening, a spokesperson for the Cincinnati Zoo said. The old tweets had been deleted and a new one from Maynard was posted: