It is also claimed that Miss Sanders, after punching her rival, held Miss Westlake backwards over a balcony and spat at her in retaliation.
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The court heard that Westlake had been seeing Mr Davies for a year at the time, but that he had previously had a five-year relationship with Ms Sanders.
Mr Davies said he had not seen the fight between Westlake and Ms Sanders, but that the former had been hanging around him a lot more than usual that night. So then I said: ‘They say the same about you’.
But it is Westlake, 30, who now faces jail after being found guilty of assault for hitting the monkey expert with the wine glass.
A jealous London Zoo keeper glassed a love rival colleague in the face at the Zoo’s Christmas party after she overheard her criticising the way she looked, a court heard.
Prosecutor Richard Doolan said: “The incident happened on December 8 past year”.
The pair started arguing and Miss Sanders screamed: “Nobody likes you – everyone thinks you’re mad”, while Miss Westlake responded: ‘Everyone thinks the same about you’.
Westlake had been dating Adam Davies for a year at the time of the incident last year.
“During the course of the evening the Crown say that there was an argument between the defendant and the victim”.
“This argument ended with the defendant hitting the victim in the side of the face”.
She told the court she did not remember hitting Ms Sanders with the glass, but accepted that she may have reacted with it in her hand due to her dyspraxia and ADHD.
‘The wine glass smashed on impact and caused a wound that required stitches’.
Miss Sanders made a disparaging comment about Miss Westlake’s appearance at the party, which was overheard by the pair, the court heard.
Miss Sanders, of Crouch End, north London, had already been given a final warning and been banned from Zoological Society of London events for two years as a result of the fight.
“Things were being said on both sides that shouldn’t have been said”, Miss Sanders told the court.
Mr Davies then asked Westlake out for a date but she turned him down because she didn’t want to be his “rebound”.
That “something” was a wine glass that cut her cheek.
“I tried to protect myself by reaching out my right hand and pushing her against the nearest thing to me which was some railings. I was completely in the wrong”‘. It kind of knocked me, knocked me back.
She added that Ms Sanders tried to throttle her over a balcony with a 30ft drop onto marble floor and said in her police statement, ‘I was fearful for my life’.
Westlake said: “When I got to the cloakroom I remember looking up and seeing her standing there”.
There were gasps from the public gallery as she said: “That is definitely not true, I did push her against the barrier to protect myself”.
During cross-examination by defence solicitor Suzanne Kelly, Miss Sanders denied she knew Miss Westlake was in the toilet and that she had deliberately tried to antagonise her.
Giving evidence, Mr. Davies described how Ms. Sanders had slapped him after a football World Cup match between England and United States of America in 2010.
‘She said that I was trying to go out with him while they were dating and I had sent him a text message asking him to go for a drink.
A court was told how Sanders, a monkey keeper at the popular tourist hotspot, required stitches following the alleged attack. I would say she was being more flirtatious than normal.
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“She may have got those injuries at work, we do a very physical job”.
