Roy of Siegfried and Roy Mauled by Tiger!

Fox

[ambrose]

developing...

[Clara Lou]

Were you gang-attacked by a puppy and a kitty when you were a little boy?

[Joe Hadenuf]

Cars should not be driven. The consequences can be brutal and fatal.

Huh? LOL! Better watch my car, it may just rip my throat out for no good reason...... Great analogy.....

People that want to play with wild animals and make um do tricks, do so at great risk.....

[Trickyguy]

I do know that mother cats will smack kittens on the nose
to discipline them. I've seen it. It's recommended to
discipline grown cats. Smack them on the nose and hiss.
if it works with housecats, I see no reason why it won't
work with any cat of any size.

[Churchillspirit]

You are sick!

[Conservative til I die]

Right. And no one is saying that everyday joe's should be training wild animals. My analogy was that no matter what you do, there's always going to be a risk of something going wrong, sometimes for no reason at all. Telling a trained professional who's been training tigers successfully for thirty years that he shouldn't do it because one time there's an accident (no matter how horrible, like this one) is akin to telling everyday joes that they shoudln't drive because something could happen. Of course it could happen.

[anglian]

Here is a great site about tigers. http://www.5tigers.org/index.htm

[lepton]

Be interesting to hear Siegfried's theory on why the cat attacked.

Probably was unnerved by all of the people. It WAS introduced as the tigers first performance.

[lepton]

Animals generally only kill to eat and in self-defense (whether the threat is real or perceived as I suspect is the case here) or defense of their young.

Except for cats of various types, and killer whales (orcas). Each like to play with their prey, and may kill and not eat it.

As for animals that will regularly eat humans as prey if they get a chance are several large cats - with mountain lions being more naturally prone than tigers - and alligators and crocodiles, in addition to those previously listed.

As for "killing in self-defense", there is a pretty good argument out there that that is where mankinds warmaking tendency came from - a desire to pre-emptively defend against dangerous predators by working together and hunting them down. Dolphins and chimps have been known to exhibit a form of this behavior.

[lepton]

It is my understanding that the only other creature besides humans that will kill their own kind without reason are rats.

What is "a reason"? There are a number of canibalistic species of animals. There are also several that kill their young when their mate dies. As noted before several species of cats and orcas are known to kill other animals as part of play.

[breakem]

If it's not too late (or too weak). No he's not the gay one, it's the other one.

[breakem]

on second thought they're not gay, they're German. Out!

[Porterville]

I remeber you, you always cry about people who don't give a damn what you feel or think... cry some more, waaa... leave me alone if your stomach is tooo weak to take a joke and if you are so serious... do you know Roy??? Is he your buddy?? FR never makes me sick, only posers like you.

[nmh]

When you are dealing with wild animals you take your chances. This was the FIRST time the tiger was to perform. Obviously it wasn't his thing.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Eyewitness said that Roy was trying to get the cat to sit and may have hit it in the snout with the microphone and the cat lunged at Roy

Don't bring a microphone to a tiger fight.

[Uncle George]

Awwww, Ben, Tabby is eating that finger all in fun.

[lizma]

A codpiece is kind of like a protective cup that you wear over your privates.

Protective! LOL and here I thought it was just one of the more "curious" medieval fashion statements.

[Steve Eisenberg]

As far as your comparison of hippos and tigers, you might have missed the sequence of posts, which began with a picture of a delightful hippo baby (cub? What the hell is a juvenile hippo called?) and went on to point out that the harmless-looking vegetarian was a bigger threat than the big cats to humans.

I just checked around on google, and can find lots of claims that hippos kill more Africans than any other substantial-sized animal. However, what I can't find is any statistics on how many people are killed each year by hippos, crocs, leopards, etc. in Africa. Well, you can say that there is no way to get those stats because of Africa's failed states. But if so, why should anyone believe the hippo claim?

Now, what about tigers? Surely the tiger countries (India, Indonesia, Thailand, Russia) have newspapers which report each mauling death. I myself sometimes go to Indian newspaper web sites and have noticed such stories there. Yet I can't find any site adding them up. By contrast, there seem credible shark stats. (5 deaths worldwide in 2001).

What is going on? Here's what I think. Tiger conservation is big business for the enviros. They want to distract attention from the tiger predation death toll by focusing on almost anything else.

[WestCoastGal]

Just on Fox. Rita Cosby interviewed Robin Leach who is a good friend of Siegfried and Roy. He said Roy had to be resusitated 3 times and has had mini strokes. He had brain surgery today and the Dr. said to pray as hard as you can and then some.

It doesn't look good.

[nuconvert]

Interesting bit of info came out today. It wasn't that tiger's first appearance. They say that in the show, but it's not true. That tiger had been performing for several years. I thought it was kind of old to have just been starting in their act. Just in a bad mood, I guess.