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“The minimum standard for a tiger enclosure is 16’-4”.

SF zoo officials in huge trouble.

Deservedly so.”

Perhaps. I’ve spent a lot of time at the SF Zoo, in the Cat House more specifically, and I’ve spent a large amount of time at the tiger enclosures drawing them and photographing them. I never saw a tiger go near the moat, and it’s a lot deeper and wider than the photos show. The tigers spend their time in the shade near the top - tigers by nature are lazy and only pursue prey when they want to eat, or provoked.

My gut feeling is the kids provoked the tiger. I witnessed that kind of thing constantly at the zoo - I watched people throw things at the animals, shine those laserpointers into the apes eyes, throw batteries, yell at them, taunt them, go out of their way to provoke a response from the animals.

I also have a strong, strong hunch it was a video-taped event, for showing on YouTube or one of the other video sharing sites, and I have a strong hunch pictures or video was found on their cell phones, but that evidence will never see the light of day.

I have no trouble imagining that the cat used a dangled limb as a ladder, and the cat got more purchase with it’s back paws while grabbing the limb with it’s front paws.

I *never* saw a tiger act in a threatening manner in it’s grotto, in the multitudes of times I was there. I saw them avoid things being thrown at them...I saw them stop and sniff the air when the breeze shifted and it could smell the zebra close by...I saw them “rawr” out of boredom, but never run around the moat, or try to jump the wall. Those tigers have been there years, with no problems with the public - even with the public TRYING to provoke them.

IF this was a freak occurance, then sympathy for the dead and hurt. If not, then I have as much sympathy for them as anyone else on the Darwin Award’s website - it’s absolute common sense you don’t mess around with a tiger, period. Ever. Even if it’s “tame”, like the ones in Vegas. We all saw what happened there. A tiger, once removed from the cage, sees us as food, and a pissed tiger? Forget it. The thing they say about tigers is, kill it fast, because if you don’t, it’s going to stalk you until it gets you. That’s why I think it was provoked - and provoked enough that when it got out, it did’nt seek food, or freedom, it sought out TARGETS.

As much as I hate it with a passion, I think the SF Zoo should shut down, to the public, anyway. I stopped going because it was being overrun with immigrants who saw it as a cheap place to babysit their kids while they sat around the cafes gossiping, or getting drunk and/or high on the grass, while their kids ran wild. The issue isn’t wild animals, it’s a moronic, stupid public who have to be coddled and protected from themselves - they clearly cannot understand “climbing into tiger pit = bad”, and will now sue because they raised a stupid child with no common sense.

The SF Zoo is probably doomed now. The rewards from the multiple lawsuits will cripple their already faltering funds, and the city has probably been waiting for this opportunity to tear down the zoo to make way for some prime real estate (and new property taxes). Like I said, maybe it’s better.

Close the zoos, and take the breeding facilities private, so stupid people can’t throw themselves into them. End of problem.

Even with the info in the article, it seems like the actual dimensions of the wall/moat are still in dispute. The point I was trying to make to you, okie, on yesterday's thread was that even with legislated standards and minimum requirements for the enclosure, such standards normally account for "reasonable" safety measures, and can not take into account unreasonable behavior. At the extreme, one could argue that even a steel shackle around the tiger's leg chaining it to a bolt set in concrete was inadequate because somebody *might* take a jack hammer to the concrete or an acetylene torch to the chain. I remember many years ago, an inner city youth somehow swiped a Gaboon Viper from the D.C. zoo, snuck it out of the park in a trash bag slung over his shoulder, and made it all the way back to his ghetto on a bus before it ultimately bit though the bag and ended up killing him. Perhaps closing the zoo (and all other zoos) is the only certain way to prevent these things altogether. Like any other aspect of freedom there are risks...and some people insist on taking unreasonable risks.

I do think it curious, as pointed out by ByDesign, and as I alluded to in one of my responses yesterday, that no tigers have previously escaped from this enclosure (although it's possible they have, but reports have been quashed by zoo authorities). It seems likely to me that something was different about the situation and circumstances on Christmas that allowed the situation to rapidly devolve into the nightmare it became.

Could the concrete in the tiger's paws be an indicator that the concrete was eroding or otherwise degraded? For some reason I'm reminded of the scene in Clint Eastwood's Escape From Alcatraz where they discover how the salt air of San Francisco bay had broken down the mortar in their cells...could something similar have taken place at the zoo?

I'm still not convinced that the victims were without fault and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Certainly it looks like the zoo will be paying up