Posted on 01/05/2008 8:40:33 AM PST by Mr. Brightside
Published - Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Using ‘taunting’ as an excuse for tiger’s attack is pathetic
by Matt Johnson, managing editor
The oddest thing about this story is the spin some pundits are putting on it saying that the tiger was taunted to attack the humans.
What planet are we living on?
A zoo, any zoo, should have as rule No. 1 -- There’s no possible way any animal in the zoo can harm a visitor.
Blaming people for taunting animals at a zoo is insanity. I’ve been to a zoo or two in my day and at every turn people are either taunting or enticing animals.
Five years ago, I remember going to the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison and going through the great ape area. A zoo official was frantically telling everyone “Turn your back to the orangutan!” as we walked through. Apparently somebody had taunted the orangutan and it was freaking out.
Back to the tiger tragedy -- what a cop out -- “Oh, they taunted the tiger, that’s what caused the incident.”
According to the Associated Press, “San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo acknowledged that the wall around the animal's pen was just 12 1/2 feet high, after previously saying it was 18 feet. According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the walls around a tiger exhibit should be at least 16.4 feet high...
“She had to have jumped," he said. "How she was able to jump that high is amazing to me.’”
Amazed? Mollinedo should be ashamed.
Negligence on the part of the zoo that didn’t have a proper-sized safety zone between the animal and spectators was the cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at vernonbroadcaster.com ...
Lion, we finally agree on something!!!!! Brilliant summary. By the way, quality win for Joe Pa and his troops in that bowl game. A great effort.
“Unless they climb into the cage with an animal.....”
OK, what if they climbed part-way into the cage, or dangled their leg over the edge, taunting the tiger to jump up at them, does that count? Or if they were holding a long stick and they were poking the tiger or rattling it’s cage and the tiger grabbed the stick and pulled them in, does that count?
People with your mindset are those who support a lawsuit brought by a ‘breaking and entering criminal’ who falls through the roof of the building he is burgularizing.
Yeah, but against a very average team. It's been quite a disappointing season...this team had enough talent to win 11 games (before bowl season), and absolutely should have won 10. Poor coaching, an absolute dope at QB, and (sadly) many off-field incidents cost them Michigan, Illinois and Michigan State.
Congrats on the dominating win against Illinois. Men against boys...how many five stars have committed so far?
I’m not blaming the tiger, I’m blaming the Zoo who had a duty and the means the control the tiger.
You know, I was thinking about that. You know the “cliff divers” in Mexico and Hawaii?
They start diving when young, from shorter cliffs, then gradually dive from higher and higher cliffs, until they know exactly the spot that’s right, the timing that’s right for the water to be coming in or going out, and so forth - there are very few mishaps, if any.
A tiger, especially a female perhaps *just* coming into season - before zookeepers had a chance to put her in the back - and this one evidently hadn’t been in heat before (not sure about that, at 4 years old - they said she was “just coming into her prime” as a breeder and “at the top of her game”), so this would be a guessing game - has lots of time to practice jumping a little farther, kaboom, jumping a little higher, kaboom. Especially at night when no one is around.
Then along comes an aggravating factor that allows Tatiana to put into effect all her practiced moves.
I’ve also been trying to think of really perverse ways that the guys might have provoked her - without knowing, of course, that she could potentially get out.
Or did they? We don’t know that they didn’t make a study of this - looking online for weakenesses in tiger domains in their vicinity. It just seems like people from India might hone in on tigers as a target. What if it’s something we could never in a million years have thought of, like “suicide by tiger” or “murder by tiger” done intentionally?
What if they had some tiger musk to arouse the lady tiger?
I don’t normally think like this, but something terrible happened that day to make Tatiana get out, with “super-tiger” agility.
Here's a few tidbits from the cats' history.
First, she was bred in captivity...."Selective Breeding".
"Even as a cub, she was noted for her "quick tempered personality" compared to her more mellow siblings".
Tatiana has been bred before....with Tony. (February 2007) At first, she shunned Tony...but then it happened. They emphasized that it went from normal sex to raucious sex. (Girl gone wild!!)
At the zoo, she was known as "the grabber" always first in line.
The cats are fed publically 6 days a week at 2:00. According to the schedule, the "fast" day is normally Monday. I keep thinking of the possibility that it was moved around because of the holiday. I'm sure that tiger has been taunted 1000 times besides the "noisy, screaming babies", mom's hollering and boys (or girl siblimgs) picking on each other.
Tatiana had only been let out into this area at the beginning of September...after 10 months of being in the Lion house. CHANGE has all kinds of effects.
Cats can be clever. I truly believe she was not taunted and am even wondering if she was on meds.
There was also an article that said Tatiana's "stretch" was 12 feet.
I think this was just one clever, frustrated cat, a "Man-eater" and that she had tried to get out before...just like you said.
We've all seen animals try this at some point. (Our dog dug under the fence...again and again and again.)
I don't like them working on the grotto...as I believe they are altering evidence. ANd I think the cat should have been put down last year when she attacked the caretaker. She had "tasted human blood" and meat is meat. She's not in the jungle. She hasn't been taught to hunt and she's in a friggin' box. MAN BY INSTINCT and proximity becomes her "Natural Food". "BEEF IS BEEF".
By the way, I saw the divers in Mexico...but had to cover my eyes once they left the cliff. And the bullfight....All us ladies were screaming when the gusher of blood came. The hubbies...they were laughing at us. Too bad their faces said they wanted to puke!!
Oh, I would never go to even a “bloodless” bullfight, much less the Mexican ones - I’m much too squeamish - but I love watching cliff divers, every place I see they are performing. It may be because I’m death-grip acrophobic and I’m projecting onto them my double admiration for their courage.
I don’t know. I don’t think she would’ve left Sousa on the ground if she were out for “tasting blood”. I saw where Jack Hanna said the same thing in some interview yesterday, so maybe my instincts were right on that one.
I didn’t know a lot of the other things about Tatiana that you posted, so thanks (didn’t remember she had already been bred, mainly, but that did jog my memory about reading that).
They say tigers are more “visual” than scent-oriented, but I doubt that any of the guys looked like Tony, lol - that’s why I kanoodled about some tiger musk, even if that seems the opposite of what I’ve read - she *is* captive from birth.
The quest for sex is as strong as the other instincts, if the others are being satisfied. Her motherhood instinct may have kicked in before she even had cubs, which made her more territorial even than usual.
As far as her stretch, I did read 12 feet also - but then I think how much harder I try to get the last dark chocolate truffle bar from the back of the top grocery shelf than I do the last box of detergent, ya know? (I’m short and never can reach up there - unless *pushed* to my limit, lol. I’m sure my streeeetttch is much taller than just my tippy-toes would indicate, then!)
And I do see how she could have grabbed onto that ledge at the top of the moat and pulled herself over (Jack Hanna had also mentioned that early on). I guess after that, the chain-link fence was nothing.
Whatever made her do it, it had to be something really extraordinary, though - not usual human behavior on “our side” of the fence.
I imagine these "breeders" are given meds...possibly to UP their incentive to breed. Was this cat in heat?
The zoo's silence is deafening.
P.S. I'm 5'4"...but shrinking. I'm already deciding how I will arrange my dishes to avoid standing on a stool. I'm considering a low shelf on the wall for my cups and even correlle because it's light and takes up less room. Also considering "paper plates".
What part of ““UNLESS they climb into the cage with an animal.....” is confusing you?
“People with your mindset are those who support a lawsuit brought by a ‘breaking and entering criminal’ who falls through the roof of the building he is burgularizing.”
People of the mindset that no one going to the zoo should be killed by an animal for “taunting” it? How ignorant.
I’m 3” shorter than you, so add in these (relatively) new breathing problems and “reach” has gotten really important to me, too, so I “hear ya” on that.
I’m already using paper plates and I keep all needed items out in plain sight, for the days I just can’t walk across the room.
(A lot of this has to do with my crummy living environment and poverty, tho. My dishes are all in storage where I can’t go get them and I wouldn’t want them on *these* cupboard shelves, anyway, lol.)
(PS - TV shows are telling adult children to be on the lookout for these signs of shortcuts in their parents’ homes! Time to go to assisted living! Aaaccck - how creepy are these MSM “experts”? The adult kids probably do the same things!)
As far as Tatiana - wouldn’t they put her “in back” (out of the public sight and environment) if she were in heat?
Oh, I just read most of that story on another thread about the zoos and cruelty to animals in China. They eat tiger meat there and I’m wondering if they do the same in India, too. (But don’t feel like googling it right now - my popup virus became active again yesterday after a whole month of dormancy - triggered by the tmz visit that shut down my browser and made me reboot.)
If they do hunt tigers in India (I somehow got the impression tigers were somewhat “revered” there - not like cows, not worshipped or anything, just respected), then they very well may sell tiger musk scent for hunting and someone with a background in that would know how or where to get it - like anything online, I’m sure.
I agree with you about your QB. Penn State deserves better than Morelli or whatever his name is. I never saw the guy do anything special, and he never got any better from year to year. But if you want to talk coaching, there are issues at USC as well. Pete Carroll really needs to fire a couple weak links in the staff (running backs coach and receivers coach for starters) otherwise USC will keep repeating 2006 and 2007, with many feeling they were probably the best group of players, but they didn’t win the title. They’ll lose a couple each year, regardless of how many top recruits they keep getting. Admittedly, USC’s injuries this year were absurd, I’ve never seen so many top guys, especially linemen, miss so much significant time. But still, they had enough guys to win the games they lost.
By the way, running backs coach McNair had his own little Michael Vick episode a number of years back (dog fighting) which came out during the Vick investigation. So you have to wonder about the mindset this guy brings to the staff.
Now, imagine these folks are the PETA equivalent of the Friends of Earth folks who burn houses and factories.
Or, maybe just the type of PETA people who release thousands of farmed mink to horrible deaths by starvation and freezing, or turn loose the chickens, or unloosen the chimpanzees at a research facility.
Isn't it the case that the PETA people had already targeted this particular zoo to get them to eliminate their captive cat exhibits?
All very feasible the way these groups behave nowadays. And they won’t be made to pay a price if it turns out they were involved. It will be ‘hushed up’.
Unless it is a duck zoo should be expected to keep animals in their enclosure. Even if you taught, heckle and provoke them. To not hold the zoo responsible is to assume a wild animal will never under any circumstance harm anyone but those terrible people that made fun of them or disrespected them. I would consider a lessor settlement in a civil suit.
I’d like to know more about the breeding program. Tatiana was bred in captivity and is being used for breeding. Do they use any meds on her? Was she in heat? Did she produce a litter when she was bred with Tony in February of 2007?
Filling in cracks in the moat wall, shaving off the tops of rocks on the insides of the moat, trimming tree branches. Typical SF ... the children are in charge. A city which survives in spite of its management - if it weren’t for climate and Pac Rim location, it would be like NOLA.
The SF Zoo is everything the SD Zoo is not. It is a complete POS, even after over 100M in bond funded largesse.
Bad seed cat, Denver Zoo reject pawned off as mating attempt. Attacked zoo keeper Dec 22, 2006. This cat and all others taken out of public until Sept 2007. As for the enclosure, back in the 50s and 60s there were credible accounts of previous escapes. As for the zoo as a whole, well, you know the score there. A protracted debacle since the 1980s when its 1940s facilities started to crumble. Other than facelift and grand plan added facilities, its the same old crappy zoo. Shut it down and sell the land to private developers.
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