"…and when he was chewing my arm off, I looked up towards the sky and screamed…
* …KHAN!!!"* :smack:
“…Shir-ley you jest…”
“Almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
By an odd coincidence, both of those things often figure into actual Darwin Awards.
A typical kid has maybe seen trained lions and tigers at the circus. They’ve maybe watched footage of a big cat taking down a gazelle out in the wild. But that evokes a feeling of awe more than fear, because it is easy enough to reason that a lion or a tiger wouldn’t act that way with a human.
So I don’t blame the kid for seeing the lions and tigers as housecats on steroids. I probably had the same perception when I was that age.
But climbing the fence? That’s evidence of poor impulse control right there. I can’t imagine a regular, run-of-the-mill 11-year-old doing something like that. I’m guessing this isn’t the first time he’s shown this kind of behavior, and that means the father needs to be held accountable for leaving him unsupervised.
That’s Shere Khan. 
I get that. They have such disarming faces.
I’d like the zoo to sue them, but I’m not sure for what exactly. Trespassing maybe? Endangering an endangered species?
Providing entertainment for other zoo visitors without permission.
Not anymore.
The kid stuck his arm in the cage on purpose, and the tiger bit it off on purpose. What was the accidental part?
Yeah. “Tigers are dangerous” may seem obvious to us, but I can easily imagine a kid making it to 11 without really learning the lesson.
He has now.
The video I saw shows the prolonged, extreme teasing the kid directed at the tiger. Video was followed with still photos of the damaged arm, which was quite literally shredded. That was one frustrated/pissed off cat.
Ah. Well, tease a tiger…
Feeding the animals.
Isn’t this only the case when the animal has to, or at least likely will, interact with humans? A dog that bites may do it again. A wild tiger that eats people may realize they’re easy pickin’s. A tiger in a zoo is supposed to be dangerous, but kept away from people permanently.
No. Only a really dumb 11-year-old would think like that. Tigers and lions, along with sharks, are the classic dangerous animal. If anything, I’d expect a kid to have a exaggerated sense of the danger a tiger would post.
Trying to poison an endangered species by offering it an unapproved food item.
Wow. Just watched some video. That kid really was annoying the tiger. Was his name Calvin?
Or pose…
I was a really dumb 11-year-old, then.
I dunno. Tigers can be pretty mean when they post. Total cyber-bullies. You probably haven’t seen a post, because they usually manage to get themselves banned pretty quickly from most message boards-- that, plus the whole “endangered species” thing. They are also really bad spellers, so sometimes their posts get pulled for incoherency. Try Reddit. They always want the screen name “maneater,” or “Hobbes,” so look for “maneater1000,” or “Hobbes2001.” Also, “Hobs,” Hobz," and “maneeter.”
This reminds me of an 11 year old boy who was killed in Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn after he and two other boys entered a polar bear enclosure.