“…All right, now where’s the girl with the toothache?”
True, true, Lobster. Even if they were sitting on the wall with their legs dangling over the side, the tiger shouldn’t have been able to reach their legs without a trampoline!
Clearly I feel very strongly about tiger safety.
Perhaps the zoo and the victims and the dead kid’s family can all sue each other. See who comes out ahead.
tigers love swimming. they just don’t like getting their faces wet. in philly the old tiger enclosure had a fill line for the tigers in the moat. if it filled over that line the tigers could have possibly, if they really wanted to, get out of the enclosure. the water was usually well below that line.
the philly zoo recently redid the big cats area. the old one was so very out of date that it was amazing there weren’t any accidents. when the lions and tigers were in one of the smaller outside enclosures you could indeed touch a paw if you so dared. thankfully, no one did.
it is a bit odd that s.f. did not redo a wall that has been standing from 1940.
a full grown sib. tiger usually measures 8ish feet from snout to tail tip. if you look at a picture of a tiger walking with the tail relaxed you will note that the tail is very close to the back leg length.
so standing up a tiger would be about 8ish feet from nose to back feet. add in a good foot of front paw reaching up over its nose, and you are close to a 10 foot relaxed reach. 12 foot fence?? just extend those lovely front claws (another 4ish inches) hook them into the fence and allyoop!
i am very disturbed about reports that the brothers would not id the friend that gave his life to distract the tiger from them. unbelievable.
Er, do we have an actual primary source that says there was a “bloody” footprint? (Or are we speaking in British?)
I agree with lobstermobster that this trawling to characterize the victims’ behavior as “taunting”, and the boys themselves as shallow and callow hoodlums is simply disgusting.
That said, there is undeniably a strong component in the American character that relishes the idea of someone “reaping what they sow”. Add into that latent sympathy for a magnificent predator squeezed to near extinction in the wild and confined in a zoo, and it’s really not too surprising. Nobody has yet given any evidence other than conjecture that they boys were taunting or dangling themselves at the tiger – but let a “tiger expert” suggest that that was the most likely trigger, throw in some neighbors who will say that these young men were considered troublemakers, and the public will look to find the story it wants to hear, with the media only too glad to give it to them.
In the Bronx Zoo, one of the largest snakes – a boa constrictor – used to have a sign next to its case in the Reptile House that read: Do Not Tap On Glass. What would you do if it broke? Very few people tapped on the glass!
And in the old Ape House, they also had a full length mirror behind a set of bars and a plaque reading, The Most Dangerous Animal In The World, and a textual listing of all the other species this “animal” had managed to wipe out from the face of the planet in the past 250 years.
Neither of these things are there now, which is too bad.
Here is a pretty disturbing story in the San Jose Mercury News, apparently based on transcripts of the police radio comm and information from a news conference.
The police dispatcher reported that zoo employees were reporting the tiger attacks, but claiming the victims were lying or crazy, even though one was bleeding from a gashed head.
The zookeepers made an attempt to tranq the tiger, and apparently did not allow the police to enter the grounds for some time. There was a radio call that zoo security was not allowing cops to enter.
On Thursday the zoo had “promised” to release a copy of its safety protocols, and is now refusing.
It seems clear the tiger leapt over the moat and wall – the entrances for the animals and keepers were still secure.
It also seems clear that pretty much everything the zoo has been releasing to the public has turned out to be either innocently incorrect or outright lies.
This just in: tiger was wearing a mask, carrying a volleyball and a flag. At the time the police gunned the tiger down, the score was oogy to boogy.
And according to Roger Clemens’ attorney, there is now a search under way for the real tiger.
Not precious; it’s common as dirt.
I was surprised to find the wall wasn’t higher. I’ve read about man-eaters getting past greater obstacles than that (and man-eaters are usually old or sick).
Perhaps the tiger was a trustee and allowed out to empty the garbage and such.
Granted the tiger should not have been able to climb the wall but the wall has been the same height for a long time and none of the tigers have climbed out before this. This does sort of lend credence to the conjecture that the young men were doing something to aggravate the tiger, other than being made of meat, to such a state that it jumped out and hunted them down.
I’d find that argument a lot more compelling if the zoo hadn’t recently revamped security in the wake of a tiger attack. Finding out that there is at least one standard from a zoo association for 16 foot walls is going to be particularly damning if that standard predates the previous attack.
I don’t doubt that the young men’s actions are going to be used to reduce any eventual reward. I also think that any zoo display should be designed with the foreknowledge that teens, in particular, and tweens, are going to be idiots and find some way to taunt the animals.
IOW, anything the zoo may gain, in my mind, by alleging that the kids were idiots they lose by failing to have considered the probability of such behavior in the wake of the comprehensive safety review of the tiger enclosure after the previous incident.
I’m not saying that the zoo wasn’t at fault just that there had to be some reason for the cat to choose this time to climb out of an enclosure that it apparently always had the ability to climb out of.
I have seen a house cat jump to the top of a 'fridge. To put a Tiger behind a 12 ft. wall is criminal.
The delay in believing that there was a tiger out was about 10 seconds, according to the article, which is not too bad. But not letting the cops in was stupid. I can only think they wanted to protect dear old kitty.
I suspect the zoo director is already sending out his resume. The SF Board of Supervisors doesn’t sound too happy. And another “hear, hear” for lobstermobster’s post.
Today the New York Post is reporting that slingshots were found on all three victims of the tiger attack:
I caught a TV newscast this morning mentioning the Post’s story as well as other reports that the two brothers who survived, who are age 19 and 23, lobstermobster, had at least one vodka bottle in their car.
Is all this true? No way to know yet, and in any case an insufficiently secure enclosure is mostly at fault, but I can’t work up much sympathy for any asshole who’d think it amusing to use a slingshot to harass a caged animal.
I seem to remember seeing a clip of the tiger handlers feeding the tiger through some bars where the tiger could clearly see said handlers and I remarked to my roommate: “Oh, this is not smart. You never want a predator to associate people with food.”
Yeah, taunting a tiger is stupid, if that is indeed what happened. But the zoo is still at fault for not putting enough safety procedures in place. This story could have ended as “Idiot Teens Arrested for Harassing Lion”.
From the Post article:
“The zoo plans to reopen tomorrow, but visitors will not be allowed to see the lions, tigers or bears, whose grottos are being modified to improve safety.”
Maybe the other tigers just lacked initiative?