Enough about the idiots who fucked around with the tiger. Tigers bite.

[Beausoir]

Jesus Christ. Some Darwin Award wannabees screw around with a tiger and something very bad happens.

Who the FUCK cares?

[jgraz]

1. I do - they got the tiger killed.

Yet another reason these beautiful animals should not be kept in captivity.

[flvegan]

4. jgraz, you cut to the chase and make a fine point.

:thumbsup:

[Midlodemocrat]

5. I admit. I love zoos. I love to see animals that I wouldn't otherwise get to see.

I am seriously of the mind, however, that these majestic animals, like all animals belong on reserves to prevent their extinction.

OT: How is your ankle?

[riverdeep]

13. There's less than 3000 tigers left in all of India.

Tigers have already been wiped out of some reserves, like Sariska in Bangledesh. The land set aside for tigers is not enough; the ignorance of nations like China that believe tigers have some magical properties brings poachers out to kill these last remaining tigers. Others see tigers pelts as a status symbol. Some subspecies' numbers can now be counted in the double digits. Some have already become extinct. We are a species saturated with stupidity, but cursed with power to act on that stupidity. There's every chance that tigers will go extinct in the wild within 20 years. Zoos are a necessity, an insurance against the destruction occurring.

[Blue-Jay]

19. I thought we were talking about a Siberian tiger.

[riverdeep]

22. Whoa, that's even worse.

Maybe 400 tops, now.

[Beausoir]

7. Agree 100%..

[ingac70]

10. Sadly...

There are more of these animals in captivity than in the wild today. In a few short years, because of poachers, there will no longer be Siberian tigers in the wild.

[silverojo]

40. Unfortunately, they must be kept in captivity to survive

Poachers are killing off wild tigers at an alarming rate. They're endangered, some species of tiger critically so. The slaughter of tigers is getting so bad, that soon the only tigers left will be those in captivity.

So very sad....

[jgraz]

49. They don't have to be put on display for our amusement

There are much better ways to "help" endangered species than keeping them in the middle of a city in a tiny enclosure where idiot teenagers can torment them.

[xultar]

50. That was my first thought. They have to kill the tiger cuz people are ignorant fucks.

[jgraz]

52. The zoo is not completely innocent here

They just admitted the enclosure wall was 4 feet shorter than recommended height. They're going to get their asses sued off. Hopefully, this will result in them not being able to keep tigers any longer.

[SoCalDem]

54. and yet, that wall was good enough for 67 years...

No tiger before this one had ever "jumped it"..

[LisaL]

56. There is a video clip on one of those threads,

in which a zoo keeper says they used to have a tiger in there, who they had to keep from escaping by having water in the moat.
There was no water in the moat when Tatiana escaped.

[xultar]

60. Agree 100%

[McCamy Taylor]

70. I know. It breaks my heart. You can provoke a cat just from staring at it.

If three young men were giving a territorial female looks that she considered too aggressive it might have gotten her scared and angry. It wasn't right to pen her up like that. And I am sure that they had no idea how dangerous she was.

:cry:

I hate seeing the tigers in zoos. The US is big enough that they could all be placed on nature preserves, and then if people want to see them, they could board tour buses and be driven through the tigers' territory.

[Rex]

2. Larger natural predator eats smaller predators, who would have

guessed that dangling your legs at a huge killing machine would piss it off!?

[BuelahWitch]

8. They were throwing things at the tiger too

"The report also said "pinecones and sticks that were found in the moat might have been thrown at the animal. Those items could not have landed in the grotto naturally," according to the sources."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071228/ts_alt_afp/usanimals_071228014403

[Rex]

12. Makes ya wonder how people live so long without putting any value on life.

Namely theirs. They HAD to know it would piss off a huge beast, capable of ripping them apart. Certainly, don't we teach these things in school? Don't tease a huge dog when you're 5. Don't stick a fork in the electrical socket when you are 7. Don't think you're safe from a 10 foot long cat, just because you are up here and they are down there. Stop pissing it off. Shoulda, coulda, didn't, dead.

[atre]

20. Please follow the story more closely

In the paragraph above the one you're citing, and one which is purported to come from the same speaker, there is a statement that there was blood and a shoe found inside the grotto. If you check today's articles, you'll see that isn't true.

In addition, the statement itself isn't true.

[BuelahWitch]

31. Who are you, the parent's lawyer?

An animal is NOT going to attack on a whim.

And don't be so fucking condescending. You weren't there either.

[LisaL]

35. An animal is not going to attack on a whim?

Says who?
She attacked her keeper almost exactly a year ago, so this is not the first time she has done something like that.

[yardwork]

51. That was a very different incident, though.

The tiger bit a keeper a year ago because the keeper put her hand near the animal's food.

I've never heard of a tiger leaping over a huge fence just to attack some people unless it was provoked. Of course this doesn't mean that the people deserved to die or be maimed. But then, it's terrible that the tiger is now dead as well.

I agree that if we are going to keep wild animals in enclosures, they need to be kept safe from the onlookers, just as the onlookers need to be kept safe from the animals.

Humans are more dangerous than tigers. We kill more often. That's a proven fact.

[LisaL]

57. The tiger didn't just bite the hand.

According to the article I read, the hand was "degloved."

[Marrah_G]

55. Okay this makes no sense

How many people have been attacked while hiking or jogging? Wild animals are not sweet cuddly little things.

Bambi would have kicked you to death while you tried to hug him.

Anyhow...this cat already had tasted human and this may have been as simple as being hungry or even just because it felt like it. She was a ferocious killer- one of the best predators in the wild. Amazing and beautiful, but also powerful and unpredictable.

[silverojo]

41. A tiger isn't a "killing machine"

They are, like any creature, apt to get seriously pissed off if you mess with it. It's just that a tiger can't punch you in the face, so it does the only thing it can do--attack with teeth and claws.

[Marrah_G]

58. Actually they are.....

An incredibly beautiful killing machine. Everything about them evolved to make them a powerful and successful predator. You don't have to do anything to become a tiger's target. They are not warm, cuddly house cats. They are known to hunt and kill humans.

[Didereaux]

59. actually ALL cats are, and sharks, and humans, and rabbits kill carrots all the time.

[Catherine Vincent]

3. It is sad.

The Bhutto assasination knocked it off the front pages. But the accident will have other zoos to heighten their walls for their tigers and lions so this tragedy doesn't happen again.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Have not followed that particular story

but today, out of ghoulish curiosity read it... and don't bet on it. A very similar accident happened at the Mexico City Zoo over fifteen years ago, if not longer...

[Contrary1]

9. I seriously doubt that someone standing 900 yards away from the inclosure...

in front of a cafe was screwing around with a tiger.

[ingac70]

11. They ran from the enclosure....

They weren't just standing there. The tiger chased them there.

[PsN2Wind]

14. Back in the 60s

A wino climbed into the lion enclosure at Fleischhacker (now S.F.) Zoo and punched a lion in the nose. The lion got righteously pissed and began to cuff the guy around some. They killed the lion to save the wino, something I've always questioned since there were a lot more winos than lions. Ah, the Sixties in "The City", you had to be there.

[ingac70]

15. Poor lion!

:(

[Rex]

16. Humans hold a special place in the animal kingdom.

We are so arrogant, that we refuse to discuss ourselves as animals. We are people. Even the lowest on the pecking order stands miles above the king of the jungle! Animals are filthy things that run around on all fours a crap right on the ground! Not people! Well maybe some, but we can deem them soulless or not so we have a different way of measuring their 'humanity'. Series.

[EvilAL]

17. Wall not high enough

"The director of the zoo where a teenager was killed by an escaped tiger acknowledged Thursday that the wall around the animal's pen was just 12 1/2 feet high — well below the height recommended by the accrediting agency for the nation's zoos."

""She had to have jumped," he said. "How she was able to jump that high is amazing to me." Mollinedo said investigators have ruled out the theory the tiger escaped through a door behind the exhibit."

"Before I said it was impossible, that's what I've said for the last two days," Jack Hanna, a former director of the Columbus Zoo who makes frequent television appearances, said late Thursday. "But today, I don't know if I'd use the word impossible.

"I think it could be feasible for a cat that has been taunted or angered," Hanna added. "I don't think it would ever just do it to do it. Somebody had to have provoked it."

Another tiger expert remained skeptical.

"It all depends on the surface and whether they could climb up it," said John Seidensticker, head of the Conservation Ecology Center at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. "I really don't think a tiger could spring that high. A leopard could. A leopard could in a minute."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071228/ap_on_re_us/tiger_escapes;_ylt=AsWMVLiCq0XQAynbjUX3WGvZa7gF

[atre]

18. Also no evidence that the kids "fucked with" the tiger

People don't seem to read much more than headlines or listen to much more than soundbytes.

[EvilAL]

24. They found some stuff

in the grotto, as per a post upthread, but that coulda been there all day. They can't say it was them that provoked it.

[atre]

27. Wrong.

That same quote comes from the guy who said that there was a shoe in the grotto and blood in the grotto. Same exact guy. Both factual allegations have now been discreditted.

[riverdeep]

28. You got to wonder though, if the tiger could've jumped at any point,

what made it jump on that day, at that moment? It was getting food, probably play. It's a natural question to ask. Yeah, the wall should be built so a tiger's motives have no say in the matter, but since it may have not, why that day of all days?

[catnhatnh]

34. And in a "Karma is Cool" kinda way.....

....wouldn't it be neat to imagine he ate the one who aggravated him?? Sure, but other than that, why would you think that was what happened?

[riverdeep]

37. Maybe because you want to investigate the possibilities of how it could have happened.

I don't have a chip on my shoulder, do you?

[EvilAL]

36. Who knows.

Maybe it was pissed off enough to make the leap, maybe this maybe that. We'll never know what the tiger was thinking. It didn't eat the kid, so it couldn't have been for food?? maybe?? heh

[riverdeep]

38. We'll never know what the tiger was thinking, true.

But the other two that were there can talk. Maybe they can fill in some of the pieces of what happened. This story is still developing.

[soothsayer]

44. Ok, but what 19 y.o. boys go to the zoo to just look at the nice animals?

[piedmont]

72. I did, and my friends too. nt

[truebrit71]

63. Were the kids there after the park had closed? What were they doing there? Reciting poetry to the...

..animals?

I don't think so...having read a little into the story, and the back story on the kids, it seems more likely that they were drunk, and decided to fuck with the tiger, and the tiger fucked them up...

Darwin recipients every one...

[catnhatnh]

21. Except of course, like most news, it was lies.....

and it now turns out there was NO proof of "Tiger Taunting" and that the enclosure that was supposed to be 20' high was ACTUALLY only 12.5' high and the zoo changed their story about a shoe in the moat and most likely in fact is that the poor bastard was killed twice-his body was ravaged by a tiger because of stupidity on the part of the zoo and then his character was assasinated by spin-doctors.....

[atre]

23. Bingo.

nm

[uppityperson]

26. oh, details details details. All they do is detract from stridently held opinions.

[truebrit71]

65. ..and he and his brothers have criminal records for being drunk and disorderly...

...oh no, wait, you were defending the delightful little innocent children...


:eyes:


My bet, they were hammered, decided to mess with the big kitty, and get fucked up when the kitty decided he'd had enough...

[atre]

25. I really wonder if that was a 12 year old white, blonde-haired girl rather than a...

17 year old hispanic boy, would so many of you guys still be cooing about a dead tiger and not a dead human being.

[judaspriestess]

29. hmmm, who knows but as for me

its a tragedy all the way around. I don't know about cooing but I'm saddened about the death of the tiger. I am being honest.

[LisaL]

32. This would be the same animal that previously mauled her

keeper. Now she killed one person and mauled two others.
IMO, they should have removed her from the zoo after she mauled her keeper.
In the wild, people hunt down and kill "man eating" tigers.

[MzNov]

67. Tatiana did not previously "maul" her keeper.

The handler was not following correct procedure when feeding the tiger. The tiger was going for the food, not her hand. That's why they didn't kill her when the incident happened. Now they put the food in a large dish, then put it on the other side of the cage, etc. etc. so the hand is not in the tiger's view.

If you are going to stick your hand up to a tiger's mouth with a giant hunk of raw meat on it, probabilities are you might just lose your hand.

I don't have a link, but I remember it.

[LisaL]

73. Well, if it all was the keeper's fault, why was zoo fined,

why did it close the Lion House for 10 months, and why did it spend a lot of money on safety renovations? I'd just like someone to answer these questions, cause quite a few people have been making claims that it was all keeper's fault.

"Komejan spent weeks at San Francisco General and underwent numerous surgeries. Her claim alleges that "proper safety devices could have prevented the tiger from being able to reach through the bars." Cal-OSHA also blamed the zoo for the bloody assault and imposed an $18,000 penalty. The zoo is appealing the fine, but has made every fix the agency requested."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/07/BAMMS0JIB.DTL&hw=komejan&sn=002&sc=782

[MzNov]

74. I didn't say it was all the keeper's fault.

The zoo SHOULD have been fined and SHOULD have made any mandatory fixes.

I stated the reason the feeder's hand was injured. I never stated as you said "it was all the keeper's fault." I don't think the zoo person was incompetent. Probably just not trained adequately. Who knows.

You already know the answers to your many questions.

[EvilAL]

30. People would.

They'd still be trying to blame the girl instead of the tiger or the zoo, or the girl AND the zoo, but not the tiger.. It's a tiger, it's stupid and vicious. Either way, kids are kids and if they pissed off the tiger the fact remains that the tiger should never have gotten out in the first place.

[BuelahWitch]

33. Oh dear gawd

:eyes:

[jgraz]

53. Eh..blonde girls are too bland

Personally, I'm glad her last meal had a little spice to it.

[LeftCoast]

39. No. Tiger escapes from 'escape proof cage' and eats Zoo visitor in densely crowded city

As a resident of said city, I care. I was just visiting one of my favorite stores right across the street from the zoo this AM. Should I feel lucky that I survived the visit? This is a rare event, but one that points out some serious concerns about this zoo and perhaps others. I'd rather this not drop down the memory hole just yet.

[MrSlayer]

42. I'm pissed that they killed the tiger.

The fucking tiger was only being a tiger. And really, he's from Siberia, you know he was salty to begin with. They could have just tranquilized it.

[soothsayer]

43. he was a she. and she didn't like the holidays, cuz she bit her keeper last christmas.

[LeftCoast]

45. It was in the process of eating someone

Would you rather they had waited for someone to go fetch the darts?

:scared:

[MrSlayer]

46. Well no, I figured the animal handlers would have them at all times.

Particularly the ones who take care of the really dangerous animals.

[LeftCoast]

48. Their response was to lock themselves in a room and call the cops

Not that I'm excusing that, but I can't fault the cops for the lack of prep on the part of the zoo.

[EFerrari]

47. I do. I take my nieces to that zoo.

It doesn't feel safe now and I'm afraid in retro that I could have put them in danger.

[book_worm]

61. sadly we don't know all the details and apparently the fense the tigers were in

wasn't up to code.

[GreenTea]

62. NO! Nothing is more important....most people don't know that tigers indeed have teeth!

[book_worm]

64. It is unbelieveable. A 17 year old kid dies and people jump to conclusions that he

caused his own death and that poor, poor tiger (who last year almost bit off the arm of somebody else) was killed instead of tranquilized as he was ripping into somebody else. It sounds to me that the fault lies with the zoo if it's true that they weren't up to code on the height of the enclosure.

[The Stranger]

69. For the five billionth time,

if the "kid" were innocent there wouldn't be a fucking police investigation going on into how the tiger escaped, nor would the tiger have picked these particular "kids" out of the whole fucking crowd to attack, not to mention the fact that the investigation into the "bit(ing) off (of) the arm of somebody else," was the fault of that someone else for reaching into the cage.

[LisaL]

71. The zoo was fined after that tiger attacked her keeper,

had to close the feeding house for 10 months, and had to make renovations.
If it was all the keeper's fault, WTF did the zoo do all that?

[cascadiance]

66. They probably watched the "messing with Sasquatch" commercials too many times!

Time to sue the makers of those commercials I guess! :)

[ecstatic]

68. Except you don't know that they "fucked around with the tiger"

:eyes: You'd probably care if it was someone you loved who paid to visit the zoo.

"# Tiger Victim Died Saving Friend "