It’s certainly possible the mom was blameless. We may never have enough facts to know that for certain. As the father of twin toddlers I can say that it’s virtually impossible to keep perfect watch on them all the time.
My wife's cousin had an ear ripped off by a lion under similar circumstances (about 55 years ago), except it was his dad who went into the cage and punched the lion and got the kid back.
Then she shouldn’t have been at a zoo with the kid. There are some places that you don’t take a kid unless you can supervise them ALL the time. Too bad she didn’t care enough about her kid’s safety to do that because an innocent animal was the victim.
Point for that mom - bring more adults if it’s too hard to watch your kids. I see many parents expecting people around them to ‘help’.
There is no village!
You’ll probably get flamed for your statement but it’s hard to know. When my daughter was about 2 we were visiting an aunt and uncle’s house. After about 2 minutes we missed our daughter and she had climbed up on top of the motorhome! I got her down OK, but, like you say, it’s virtually impossible to keep perfect watch.
I have grown up twins. Sometimes I’m amazed they made it to adulthood. They were much more difficult than their older brother.
They were escape artists: climbed out of their cribs at around a year, could climb safety fences soon afterward, could get out of strollers and cars eats easily, and knew to move a chair to the door and unlatch the chain by 2.
They are very sweet young ladies now and we all laugh at their shenanigans.
pogo, pogo, if you know that, you need to take extra measures to ensure it is minimized. Especially where animals are involved. That being said, parents are humans, too, and will always make these mistakes.
Having seen how some parents allow their children to run wild - in restaurants, department stores, Toys R Us - I doubt she was blameless.
I've seen too many kids running around endangering themselves and others, not to mention irritating the heck out of others.