Archives for December 2007

If the zoo was near closing time when the animal attack occurred the questions that cross my mind and that have not been explored are:

*Who were the keepers assigned to the string that included the Lion House/Tiger Grotto?
*Was the zoo on minimal staff scheduling due to the holiday?
*What time were the cats scheduled to come in and where were the keepers at the time of the incident?

There is a lot of focus on the statement that the door was closed and that could not have been the reason the cat got out but that is often how animals do escape…human error.

“The tiger did not think he was playing,” said Marcan, who owns Adriatic Animal Attractions in Ponce de Leon and trains tigers for circuses. “The tiger was doing what tigers do. It’s not the tiger’s fault. It was human error.”

Marcan, who has trained hundreds of tigers for more than half a century, said he was not surprised when he heard about the attack.

“It’s a zoo tiger,” he said. “Zoo tigers are different from circus tigers. A circus tiger is like a college graduate. A zoo tiger is like a dummy, an illiterate.”

What Marcan is referring to is how an animal changes once it is trained to think. Many zoos have some form of animal training for husbandry and mental occupation but animal actors and other animal performers usually travel and are exposed to a variety of environments and training experiences.

This enrichment and mental stimulation changes the animal. It does not mean the animal is not a predator–they still remain deadly. However, when you work with animals you discern the differences.

You can read the whole article here. Most animal attacks are from human error so it will be interesting to see what the final verdict on the San Francisco tiger attack ends up being.

On a more familiar level, pets that have been socialized and trained are better citizens than a pet that has been kept outside in a yard all of its life. There are some pit bull dogs that are good citizens and others that aren’t–such as those pit bulls who just attacked and killed a women in Barstow.