Before this weekend’s absolutely horrific story in the headline, the only other time a tiger appeared in a "Predator Watch" column was when I wrote about magician Roy Horn. His performing partner Montecore, a 400-pound white tiger, mauled him during a Las Vegas show in 2003. Horn survived the attack but was left partially paralyzed.
The title of that column was “What Were They Thinking?” and in it I quoted wildlife expert Ron Magill: “We cannot try to make them our pets. They will never be our pets. You might be able to take an animal out of the wild. You will never take the wild out of the animals.”
That holds in zoos, too. I can’t imagine anyone not asking “What was he thinking?” after reading that a man was mauled to death after entering the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in England on Saturday.
Video of the attack is reportedly circulating online, but the details are so gruesome that I don’t even want to stumble across it, and the park is urging people not to share it. The New York Post reports:
Heart-stopping footage showed the tiger biting and clawing at the man’s back as he sat on the grass and tried to stop the terrifying attack.
“No! No! No!” the man shouted after the initial bites — holding up his index finger and appearing to try to reprimand the beast.
Horrified bystanders yelled in the background and made frantic pleas of “no” as the tragedy unfolded.
A BBC report quoted Karmelle Pelham, 39, who was at the park with her family when it was evacuated. She noticed an air ambulance circling overhead and described hearing what sounded like “gunshots.” She also said, “There was a big, black tarpaulin over the tiger enclosure.” The enclosure, a two-acre reserve for endangered Amur tigers, is in the park's Land of the Tigers area, which opened in 2011.
Related: Predator Watch: What Were They Thinking?
The Star reported that the shots heard were likely gas canister and tranquilizer darts. South Yorkshire Police said that the emergency services attended to the man but he was pronounced dead at the scene, while the tiger was uninjured. It stayed in the enclosure, which remained closed on Sunday.
The victim remains unidentified, and it still hasn’t been reported exactly how he entered the enclosure. Was it deliberate or accidental? As more details become available, we may get a better understanding of what happened.
Fatal tiger attacks have also occurred at American zoos. The image at the top of this article shows a 350-pound Siberian tiger named Tatiana who escaped from her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and mauled 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. to death on Christmas Day 2007. Documents the Associated Press obtained years later through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that a federal investigator concluded the tiger was likely provoked into leaping and clawing out of its enclosure. However, CBS News reported that “whether or not the tiger was provoked has long been a point of contention.” It quoted Lora LaMarca, a zoo spokeswoman: “Nobody was there to witness it at that time of day, it was closing, just the people who were there and the tigers. We cannot prove the animal was provoked, and regardless of that, she was able to jump out which led to a whole series of renovations to that exhibit which makes sure this will never happen again.”
Just a year before the attack, Tatiana had injured zookeeper Lori Komejan, who was feeding the tiger during a public event. In 2009, the San Francisco Zoo reached a settlement with Komejan, whose lawsuit alleged that the zoo created dangerous conditions by not installing effective safeguards for the tiger cage.
In 2016, Stacey Konwiser, 38, was killed by a 350-pound Malayan tiger at the Palm Beach Zoo. NBC News reported that “Konwiser had entered the 12-year-old tiger’s night house — an area not visible to the public and where cameras were turned off — when she was attacked.” The zoo faced criticism for tranquilizing the tiger instead of shooting it. NBC News explained the decision:
Attempting to fatally shoot an animal that's mauling a human comes with the risk of accidentally shooting the person you're trying to save. But tranquilizers can take as long as 10 minutes to kick in, letting potentially life-saving minutes tick by while the animal is still alert enough to pose a threat.
Palm Beach Zoo chose to tranquilize the tiger, and Konwiser, 38, was airlifted in critical condition to a hospital, where she later died of her injuries.
The autopsy found that Konwiser died of a fractured spine and neck injuries. It listed the death as an accident but noted that Konwiser, a tiger expert, screamed for help into her radio before she was crushed.
It’s heartbreaking to imagine the victim in England shouting “No! No! No!” before the tiger killed him, whatever the circumstances of this weekend’s attack.
