Horror at the Zoo

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It's not clear yet what happened. A foot print and blood were found just inside the enclosure, as well as pine cones which would not normally have been able to have dropped into it. Most zoo experts say even if provoked the tiger should not have been able to get out of the enclosure. The door to it was found secured shut. Still a mystery, but since the three victims were together, it's possible that once they get out of the hospital in a few days there will be a statement to the police and more will be known.
 
People underestimate

animals without opposing digits because our perspective of reality is formed by our physical characteristics.
My cat taught our so neighbor's baby how to climb so he could open the cupboard containing her favorite chocolates (so much for the nonsense that cats can't taste "sweet"). She doesn't have thumbs, but that doesn't mean she can't indulge in some inter-species cooperation to achieve her goals. Oh, yes...he still climbs down head first at the age of six...
We need to throw out our 19th century views on what animals are and how they "behave" and pay attention to what serious scientifically balanced studies have shown recently.
Kinda puts things into perspective.
 
Now THIS Is Sick:

It seems that some idiot or idiots may have heard the news about the San Francisco incident, and possibly have tried to stage a little re-enactment (link below):

"Vandals cut a chain-link fence overnight at the Lincoln Park Zoo to free the two animals from their habitat. Both were found inside the zoo's outside fence, tranquilized and returned to their cages.

Mayor Kevin Crawford said he doesn't know whether the vandals were influenced by a Tuesday incident at the San Francisco Zoo in which a tiger escaped from its enclosure, killed one person and critically injured two others. Police are seeking the vandals, he said."

What in the blazing blue hell is this world coming to?

 
The situation with regard to information about what really happened could best be described as "fluid" at this point.

From a variety of news sources:

- The moat wall was only 12.5 feet high, not 20 ft high as the zoo officials previously stated. Zoo experts are quoted as recommending a minimum of 16 feet for moat depth for big cat enclosures.

- The two brothers, aged 19 and 23, who were the survivors of the attack, and are recovering from their wounds, have been described by one source as not fully cooperating with the police investigation of the incident. They have prior arrest records for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest type offenses.

- A foot print was found on the waist high fence railing around the enclosure. Police are deterimining if it matches any of the shoes of the victims.

- The cat first attacked one of the survivors. When he yelled, it let him go and attacked Sousa. When the others saw him get killed by the tiger, they ran to the cafe about 300 ft away where they figured there would be others who could help them. The tiger then followed them, perhaps tracking their trail of blood, to corner them in front of the cafe. When police arrived, the tiger resumed attacking one of the men, at which point the police either distracted the tiger with their squad car lights, or advanced en masse on the tiger. When it turned towards them and approached, they shot it multiple times with their 40 calibre service revolvers.

- The zoo staff is equipped with rifles etc. to handle such emergencies but the police arrived - in about 20 minutes - before those weapons could be deployed.

- SF Police Chief Heather Fong says there is no indication from the investigation at this time that there was any taunting of the animal or trespass into its enclosure - at this time.

- One source states that bits of concrete were found in the tiger's hind paws, indicating it had scaled the moat wall.
 
Isn't it

The aircraft industry which says that all catastrophes are the result of several things going wrong at once, not just one single error or failure?
If it were my responsibility, I would be looking at all aspects of this, but especially at the security mechanisms from the perspective of the big cats.
Between the 13 years I lived with a hybrid wolf and the 21 with cats, I have learned that just because I can't see a way around my defensive measures does not mean that the four-footed can't.
At a time when I was being taught in Anatomy 101 that Lupis lupis is color blind, my wolf was opening the refrigerator, taking butter out of the glass dish and replacing it with the only yellow sponge in the kitchen. Close enough to hold my suspicion at bay until the next day...and we all know you aren't supposed to correct an animal for breaking training after the offense because they can't make the association...
Or the cat who a very advanced and intellectual house guest insulted. This primate insisted that cats not have any foresight or capacity to react to a man-made hurdle.
I won't pretend my cat understood the words (I didn't understand half of it) but she did manage to dig out this guest's keys from among over 20 others' belongings and bury them, and them alone in her cat litter box. On the next occasion (friend of my partner, had no choice) Mz. Superior 'cause I have thumbs' put her purse away in the microwave. No way they could get to it there.
Well, the cats were too primitive not to know that. They had figured out years before that if one pushed the release lever while the other pulled against the door from above, they could open it.
End of the sicky-sweet stories...just my observations.
Don't taunt animals. Ever.
 
My three cents:

I love tigers and I don't believe that human error and stupidity needs to result in the death of even 1 tiger. Not the tiger's fault!! It's the price we pay for the badly conceived incarceration of big cats for public amusement. While I am aware there are organizations that hold big cats for constructive study, rehabilitation, recuperation, etc. we are incurring a huge karmic debt for taking these beautiful and endangered animals out of their natural habitats for our enjoyment. When these animals go out of control, rather than destroying them out of hand, I wish they would tranquilize them and transport them back to the wild and let nature take over. If they die in the wild, so be it. Better to give them the chance they deserve because of our failure to keep them.
 
Bajaespuma:

"When these animals go out of control, rather than destroying them out of hand, I wish they would tranquilize them and transport them back to the wild and let nature take over."

This is sort of what Shambala Preserve does. Shambala is run by the Roar Foundation, headed by actress Tippi Hedren of "The Birds" fame. Here's a link to Shambala's website, so that you can see what good they're doing:

The Shambala Preserve presented by The Roar Foundation

www.shambala.org www.shambala.org
 
Well, it looks like the zoo is at least partially at fault here, as the wall height is not only 7.5 feet below what the zoo was telling people (20), it's also four feet below what the minimum standard should be (16.5 feet). The moat was built in 1940, perhaps when standards were different - but the zoo director is saying that the records they have on file indicate it's 20 feet, which is clearly not the case.

My personal take on this is that the enclosure should have been secure against animal escape no matter what a human might be doing outside the fence.

No, it's not right if someone was teasing the tigers, but death shouldn't be the penalty for that in a public zoo. The appropriate penalty would be ejection from the zoo, perhaps a long term ban, and perhaps criminal fines. But I don't think the young man deserved his fate - the zoo let him down. Plus, there's indications that he was trying to distract the tiger when it attacked the first person, and then he got attacked and killed, and the other two ran off.

If someone was trespassing inside the enclosure, then yeah, not entirely the zoo's fault there. But still... the whole environment there needs to be analyzed carefully so that nothing like this ever happens again.
 
nature

Whatever mistakes were made or safety measures overseen, taunting animals is just about as vicious as it gets.

People who taunt animals are invariably cruel to humans, too. And before the PC crowd jump on me, that is based on my four semesters work on the crisis phone lines and seven years volunteering at the Humane Society. The viciousness of some people is beyond measure. It has nothing to do with sexuality or ethnic origin.

I don't know for a fact that these young men were abusing her, but if they were, then it is a pity she only got one of the three.

If they weren't, well, that is a tragedy. Otherwise, the only injured party here was the innocent tiger.
 
I'm amazed at the zig-zag route this story is taking in the media. Let's recap, shall we?

1) Tiger escapes and kills at zoo cafe, possibly the zoo's fault. Bad zoo!

2) Someone might have helped tiger escape. Bad person, zoo exonerated!

3) Wall may have been too short and tiger was able to get out. Bad zoo, after all!

4) Teens may have tried to scale wall and dangled leg over wall, taunting tiger. Bad teens, zoo (almost) exonerated again!

5) Tiger climbed/leaped too-short wall enclosure. Valiant teen distracts tiger from mauling friend, then is, himself, killed by tiger. Brave teen! Bad zoo!

Every time the media leads us to a probably villain, the story morphs. This is the trouble with our 24-hour news set-up. A lot of reporting is done before facts are known and investigations launched. Gotta fill those news hours with SOMETHING, right?
 
It's all in the nature of an on-going story.

Um, the zoo was largely responsible for the confusion here. It gave out five different heights for the moat wall, for example, before the zoo director finally decided to take a tape measure and measure it himself. I don't blame the media for that, they were only trying to report what the zoo was telling them.

The zoo was also the source of the stories that the tiger must have been provoked, that someone might have trespassed inside the enclosure, etc. The way the zoo personnel reacted - or failed to react - during this crisis is slowly coming out as well. At one point, the zoo gates were locked and paramedics were not allowed inside to treat the victims! Emergency procedures were not followed by zoo personnel, weapons inside the zoo for the purpose of putting down an escaped dangerous animal were never brought out. It took police from a station outside the zoo to finally stop the tiger attack.

Incidentally, the SF Zoo is a private company that operates on city owned property.
 

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