Posted on 12/27/2007 10:18:04 AM PST by wardaddy
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The big cat exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo was cordoned off as a crime scene Wednesday as investigators tried to determine whether a Siberian tiger that killed a visitor escaped from its high-walled pen on its own or got help from someone, inadvertent or otherwise.
Police shot the 300-pound animal to death after a Christmas Day rampage that began when the tiger escaped from an enclosure surrounded by what zoo officials said are an 18-foot wall and a 20-foot moat. Two brothers who also were visiting the zoo were severely mauled.
Police Chief Heather Fong said the department has opened a criminal investigation to "determine if there was human involvement in the tiger getting out or if the tiger was able to get out on its own."
Police said they have not ruled anything out, including whether the escape was the result of carelessness or a deliberate act.
(AP) Tatiana, a female Siberian tiger that killed one person and injured two others, is seen in the lion... Full Image
Fong said officers were gathering evidence from the tiger's enclosure as well as accounts from witnesses and others.
One zoo official insisted the tiger did not get out through an open door and must have climbed or leaped out. But Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo and a frequent guest on TV, said such a leap would be an unbelievable feat, and "virtually impossible."
"There's something going on here. It just doesn't feel right to me," he said. "It just doesn't add up to me."
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_7820353?source=most_viewed
The San Francisco Zoo’s tiger enclosure does not meet the industry suggested safety standards, according to a zoo official.
Zoo director Manuel Mollinedo this afternoon said the dimension’s of the enclosure’s moat and wall that he quoted Wednesday were inaccurate. Instead of a 20-foot-wide dry moat and 18-foot wall, the enclosure has a 33-foot-wide moat and a 12-foot-5-inch wall.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums suggests a minimum of a 16-foot-4-inch wall - which is considered a conservative barrier.
Is the moat supposed to be dry? I don’t know what good a dry moat would be—water, maybe four feet deep, would keep a strong, large animal from getting enough momentum to do a straight jump upwards.
Don’t those Mexicans know a fence means Keep Out! (insert your own punchline here...)
Dom Pedro had told them if they could sneak past the water barrier and the fence that is where the good jobs all are.
Tatiana Tiger: “Damn! My first night out and all I can get to eat is greasy Mexican food!”
If the Kids parents are half as stupid as they raised their son to be they’ll blow their settlement money pronto, but they’ll still have that shiny new Darwin Award trophy on the mantle.
Can we get some tigers for the border?
I could go on and on, This is great joke material.
Yes, that all you can get from a tranquilizer gun.
What are we debating?
Damed if I know.
Happy New Year to you and yours.
Regards,
GtG
YUP
A larger cat would be able to scale a larger wall, but not a proportionately larger one.
I’m not an expert to say if the moat ought to be dry or filled, but the photos show a dry moat. As far as I know, you are right in guessing about the purpose of the moat - it is to make jumps onto the wall impossible. But here we have a dry moat, which the tiger could visit at any time, and a wall that nobody bothered to measure for half a century. Given this, I believe tigers haven’t been escaping earlier just because they didn’t want to.
Is it OK? No. It's a little late to approve or disapprove IMO. It's done.
If they were taunting the tiger did they deserve to be killed or mauled? I guess that depends upon what you mean by "deserve." It was a natural consequence of their actions which were undertaken by their own free-will choices. Would I consider that a morally or ethically balanced result? No. But it is a perfectly ordered result of their actions given the reality of 'tiger.' If you harass a large predatory animal you are creating the conditions for a result just like this.
I can empathize with ignorance but I sure can't sympathize with it.
Maybe the tiger was planning it. Maybe they’re smarter than we think...
Personally I want to welcome our new feline overlords...
And also you :~)
More likely the cops didn’t want anyone running around with bigger guns than they had.
Or they’re trained to disarm all non-LEOs.
Yeah yeah... how about we sit around and insult the only people in this story who ~didn't~ screw up or do something stupid?
You think Meerkats are ugly? Weird.
And they are actually clean animals from what I can recall...they aren’t rodents either.
Apparently the dead kid even grabbed the tiger’s tail according to an earlier post!
If true, he has to be Darwin Award winner of the year.
One of the first reports I heard said that the cops saw the tiger mauling one of the victims and yelled at it to stop. When the cat turned towards them, they fired.
Now, I know better than most that first reports are usually incorrect, but...
I don’t think anything more or less has been reported since...
Nobody probably dangled a leg over the edge and possibly even grabbed the tiger’s tail, so no doubt they saw no need to try to escape. This event just got the adrenaline going so she said “I’m out of here to get that punk.”
Before, they saw the people, but they weren’t particularly interested in attacking them probably since they had a good diet as it was.
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