He won’t do that again.
This is weird timing. I hadn’t seen this story yet but a couple hours ago I decided to read follow the local big cat rescue’s fb page and then went to their main page and was reading about various attacks like this one.
I haven’t watched the video but how long was the kid teasing the tiger and what was the father or even other people doing during the time (aside from the guy filming it)?
If you search, you can find a longer video, and he was teasing the tiger for a pretty long time-- a couple of minutes, which around here would be a pretty long time, because no zoo worker would let it go on that long, and I imagine if the kid persisted after a warning, the family would be invited to leave. I don’t know what the father was doing, because I can’t tell if he is any of the background people who are barely visible. I doubt he’s the one doing the filming.
I don’t know who had the phone, or whether that person can be said to be in any way responsible, because, while he couldn’t have known exactly what was going to happen, he must have sensed something was up, because he was filming. For all I know, he was an animal rights activist who didn’t like that someone was messing with a tiger, and no one who worked at the zoo was helping the tiger.
That’s why I say “bad accident.” Fuck ups all around. That’s what bad accidents kinda are.
Here’s a youtube video that uses some video footage, and some computer recreation to show what happened. The computer recreation is supposedly based on witness statements. It’s not terribly gory. It appears that according to witnesses, the father stood by and watched the whole thing, and the kid was feeding the tiger pieces of meat, when the tiger bit too far up. There’s an English voice-over that says the father was charged with negligence and released on bail.
Here’s another video that shows the kid apparently trying to feed the lion, but the lion isn’t interested, so the kid goes over to the tiger, and runs around, and climbs the fence, trying to rile up the tiger a bit before he offers him the meat, or whatever he is trying to feed him. After that, it cuts to a different video, this one with voice-over, showing the boy being taken out of the enclosure, put on a stretcher, and on an ambulance. All gory parts are blurred out, as is the boy’s face.
I am actually beginning to wonder if the father was the one filming the kid when he is initially pestering the animals, before he is bitten.
Cripes, there’s a reason that the zoo keepers use long shovels or pitchforks when they feed the lions and tigers. It’s not even a good idea to feed something like raw meat to a dog with your bare hand.
One of the dumbest things I ever did was getting my Pit Bull/GSD mix to jump up and try to grab a toy I was holding. I didn’t get more than a boo-boo that needed Neosporin and a couple of Band-Aids, and I learned my lesson.
A similar thing happened in Guwahati , Assam , India a few years ago. A 50 year old man fancying himself a great photographer crossed the security barrier to the tiger enclosure despite warnings from the zoo security guards. To get a better picture unmarred by bars, he stuck his hand through the fence . Unfortunately he was unaware that the consort tiger was lying immediately next to the fence wall and promptly grabbed his arm and ripped it off at the shoulder .The zoo staff tried to fend off the animal with sticks, but to no avail. The poor man died of blood loss. Sadly this occurred in front of his two young sons whom he had been trying to impress .His severed arm was later seen being played with by the tiger.
There were photos on the web, but not accessible now
If you even look funny at the security barrier around the big cat areas at the zoo here, the keepers are on you like wet on water. There’s a security bar that you can’t just duck under, you’d have to go to some trouble to climb over, then there’s the fence around the habitat, then there’s plexiglass about four feet up the fence, which keeps people from sticking their hands through it if they do get over the first barrier. The fence it about 20 feet high, and there’s nothing the cats can climb on to get over it.
They still manage to keep the exhibit interesting. There’s an observation area that it thick plexiglass, and the you can go right up against that glass. It looks in an area that occasionally the lions and tigers wander into voluntarily, and twice a day, the keepers bring one of the tigers into, and give it something to play with that motivates it to stay in the area-- they look like great big versions of small cat toys-- they may be rawhide balls with a piece of meat inside, and the cats roll them around. Sometimes they get curious about the people, and walk right up to the glass. If you bang on it, you get told to leave.
There’s also a spot where you can race a cheetah. They have a place where one of the cheetahs like to sprint, and there’s a track next to it. When the cheetah gets ready to take off, you can run next to it. It’s on the other side of wire and plexiglass, but you are about three feet away-- until it runs ahead of you. Kids love this.
If you Google " land of jewels mishap at Guwahati zoo" you’ll get a link.
And if you search that in youtube, you will find some things you SHOULD NOT WATCH, unless you have plenty of brain bleach handy.
:eek: It didn’t only rip off his arm, he was *scalped *as well!
Like that idiot at Yellowstone telling his kid"Pet the Bison". Good thing the kid was fast,not wearing flip-flops and there was a large bush handy! :shock:
Glad to hear the father is being charged.
I’m also glad to hear the tiger is not being “charged,” so to speak; if the kid was dangling meat at the tiger, and the tiger grabbed at it, and essentially “overshot,” it wasn’t even really being aggressive, in spite of the fact that the kid had been teasing it.
OMG, that was horrific! How about a warning???
You bet he’s gesturing. That’s how bison give you the finger.
The Bison said,in every way he could “Go away,leave me alone!”
Barbara Billingsley wasn’t there to translate.
Well, not unless he has a good reason…
