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Physicist Calculates Trajectory of Tiger At SF Zoo
KentuckyFC writes "Is it really possible for a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away? (Said another way: a 159-kg tiger, a 3.8 m barrier, and 10 m away.) A physicist at Northeastern University has done the math, a straightforward problem in ballistics, and the answer turns out to be yes (abstract on the physics arXiv). But I guess we already knew that following the death of Carlos Souza at the paws of Tatiana, a Siberian Tiger he had allegedly been taunting at San Francisco zoo at the end of last year."
Surely someone would have calculated how far away a tiger needed to be from the public? Or doesn't anyone know how far a tiger can leap at SF zoo?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's just nice to see that the zoo's kharma system was working. Unfortunately, someone meta-modded the tiger with a shotgun.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Seriously, you'd think the people who designed the enclosure would know how to do that kind of math... or at least be smart enough to get a consult. I wonder how many aquarium designs they went through before they finally made one that held its contents properly...
=Smidge=
So 26.7mph is fine - great, but I'd like to see a tiger run at 26.7mph uphill (at 55 degrees!). That would be vastly more impressive than 35mph on the flat.
All prior researchers have not returned from the jungle. Information is incomplete.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, I guess this is enough for the lawsuits to start flying at the zoo. Surely there are enough lawyers out there that will take the case. "Your honor, the zoo was clearly negligent in designing a tiger cage that a tiger could jump out of. The fact that the victim was allegedly taunting the tiger does not factor into the fact that the tiger was able to escape due to the mistake of the zoo building the environment."
Which begs the question; What kind of methods are used to determine the 'standards' for an inclosure?
The repeated mentioning of this guy taunting the animal irritates me, because it seems to imply it was his fault.
Yeah, climbing over the fence to deliberately provoke a large predator and whatnot... totally the zoo's fault.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I did a similar calculation a while ago.
An object of 750kg can accelerate to 60km/h in 5 impulses (rapid pushes).
How far will an object of 75kg travel when one such impulse is applied at angle of 45 degrees upward?
The 750kg object is a horse. About 5 pushes of hind hooves are enough to reach the full speed.
The 75kg object is a human kicked by the horse (remaining motionless with a counter-push of front hooves).
The result was something like 30 meters. The damage was equivalent to fall from 6th floor.
And they tell us horses can't say "no" when they don't want sex.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The tiger, obviously, disagreed with you. I submit that the tiger had better knowledge of the extent and degree of taunting that you do.
Sure, if I saw a guy taunting animals at the zoo I'd think he was a complete jerk. If it was really out of hand, I'd call security to arrest the guy.
It isn't as if this is a judicial sentence of death. What he deserved is irrelevant. You use that term when you are talking about justice not when you are talking about accidents with wildlife.But it's not something he deserved to die for.
It is a good habit not to blame the victim of a crime. But no real crime occurred here. He was just the victim of an accident that he caused. This should be repeated in every story discussing this event as a warning to any other stupid individual who thinks taunting tigers is harmless.
If we already know the answer, then the question really is, can we explain how a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away, or do we need to do some more research?
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I've been to the zoo dozens of times and have never been mauled by any animals. I'm not saying he deserved to die, but maybe he should have stuck to taunting the turtles.
Looking at this diagram: http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/01/03/mn_grotto.jpg You can see that it is 33ft along and 2.5ft up for starters. (12ft is from the bottom of the moat, not from where the tiger jumped).
Then the tiger's centre of mass is probably about 2.5ft up anyway so it more about being able to jump 33ft flat.
Also speed doesn't translate into distance in this simplistic way either: if it did humans would be almost able to jump the distance (max speed = 26.25mph) which is close as damm it to the 26.7mph required.
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The numbers don't tell the entire story. Just because something can go 27mph doesn't mean it can necessarily project itself over the fence at a given projectory. The worlds fastest humans can go 27mph, but I'll put money against their ability to jump over a 12.5' fence; the world high jump record is 8'. Tigers and people are built differently for sure, but I'm not sure how the math applied in this document applies to animals when so many other factors are at play.
Well TFA points out that the enclosure didn't meet the recommended height, but still passed a safety check by the same body that actually made the recommendations.. strange, and tragic.
which is totally what she said
But it's a mitigating factor. The tiger didn't attack some random person, this guy was doing something to provoke the attack. That puts the attack in a different category. Both categories are bad in this case, but they are still different.
A well designed enclosure would have prevented this. The zoo is at fault. There is no question there.
However, the guy wasn't innocent. The tiger may not have attacked if he was behaving differently. There is a risk when you tease a 350lb killing machine. I see the fact he was doing that as important.
Your point is a bit like "sure he was kicking the dog, but that doesn't make it OK that the dog mauled him". Just because the result (mauling) was worse than the crime (kicking the dog) doesn't mean the crime is irrelevant.
Now teasing a tiger is not as bad as kicking a dog... the tiger isn't actually injured. The point is that the guy is not without blame.
If I had kids, I'd rather they heard this story with that fact, and would get the chance to learn the lesson "don't taunt things that can easily kill you, even if you think you're safe" than either never learn that lesson or learn it the hard way.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"Och, someone save me from the wee turtles! They were too fast for me!"
Blank until
before I finally decide.
Wanna bet the tiger would still be in its cage if these drunken idiots had decided NOT to shoot it with a slingshot? The only tragedy here was the tiger having to be killed.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
35 mi/hr across the ground != 26 mi/hr at a 55 deg angle. I'd like to see how they propose converted that lateral velocity to the highly inclined one.
This is high school physics done badly. Very poor analysis.
The people who "designed the enclosure"? It was (IIRC) a WPA project from the 1930's. It wasn't designed, it was built.
The crazy part was that the people who ran the zoo had no idea of its height, or lack thereof. And when inspectors came through the zoo a couple of years ago, nobody mentioned to the zoo that the height was below standard. In other words, it's not a design problem (the height was fine when it was built, back when nobody was stupid enough to taunt tigers like that), it's a maintenance problem, as in keeping up to standards, or even knowing that you aren't.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I wouldn't mess with the turtles if I were you. While the tiger's retribution may be swift and deadly, the turtle is content to bide his time, and has a much colder, darker heart. Once you get on a turtle's bad side, your life will never be the same. The turtle will make the rest of your long life a living hell. A turtle is cold and evil, and he never forgets.
No. the sickest part was putting the tiger down because a human was stupid beyond belief and a zoo didn't build an enclosure to protect the public AND the tiger from stupid humans. The tiger deserved the tribute because it died because it behaved to its expected nature. The human was mauled because he was STUPID and the zoo was irresponsible.
You can blame the zoo and blame the human, but the the tiger was innocent - the tiger was the victim here. Do not loose sight of this fact.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Also, taunting a tiger is a lot different than taunting a shrew, a turtle, or any other animal at the zoo. Those other ones don't have a reputation as man-eaters. Who's to say that a tiger couldn't get out of pretty much any enclosure, given that it felt pissed off enough? the 12-footx30-foot distance is supposed to remind you that this cat means business.
Taunting a tiger is a bit like running down the street screaming the N word in Harlem: there are much, much safer ways to be a jackass.
stuff |
I've been to the zoo dozens of times and have never been mauled by any animals.
You are not going to the right zoos then.....
Monstar L
I took engineering physics in college, and from what I recall all formulas only worked on massless, frictionless systems and didn't account for air resistance. Now, how the hell did a physicist crunch these numbers?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Nobody is saying he deserved to die. If you take risks with your life and the risk doesn't pay off.. well tough.
Except, apparently, the Zoo knew that the 12 foot wall was four feet short of recommended guidelines for containing a healthy man-eating tiger in the presence of the general public. Also, the Zoo should quite rationally be fully aware that in any sample of the general public, there will be jackasses who would like to taunt said cats, and also vulnerable people who are completely innocent nearby, should the tiger still be hungry after eating said jackass.
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Let's see. On an average day at the zoo, there are several thousand people who visit this enclosure. During all the years this enclosure has been around and has had a tiger of some sort in it, not one person has ever been attacked, let alone killed.
Then one day, after drinking and some drug use, these asshats decide to stand on a fence around the enclosure, yell and taunt at a wild animal which is known to be able kill humans, possibly shoot it with a slingshot, and yet somehow, despite the actions of supposedly the smartest animal on the planet, it's not the guy's fault he got himself killed?
But it's not something he deserved to die for.
It's called being responsible for your actions. Put another way, survival of the fittest in all its glory.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I don't know whether or not those boys taunted the tiger, and honestly, I'm not sure it would have made a difference. But I'm fairly certain the tiger would not have "settled down" after only killing a couple of people, not when the place was filled with fearful, slow two-legged animals acting like "prey". Welcome to the world of wild animals.
blue
I believe the thing that bothers most people, why they seem to imply that the guy got what was coming to him, is that the animal was behind bars and the guys were torturing it verbally and possibly with a slingshot [begin slingshot debate now]. Would the guy have done the same thing to a large breed dog he saw walking down the street? Probably not. But some vodka and an animal enclosure turns the guys into George of the Jungle.
When push comes to shove do most people think the guy really deserved death? No. But we're far enough removed from it to think about it like something we'd watch on TV instead of something that might happen to someone we know.
Strange side note:
The following is from a major news outlet regarding what the police did when they arrived on the scene only to find the tiger loose:
Nice work. I understand it's not something you deal with at the academy, but do you really think yelling "Stop" is going to have a major impact on the behavior of the tiger?
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
All she wanted was peace and quiet for her all-day nap. Did she deserve to die for that?
Coming up next on Mythbusters :-).
Now jump that fence or I shall taunt you a second time.
I once had a guided-tour through a German zoo. When we came to the tigers the guide told us that the tigers in theory were able to leap over the barriers. According to the guide many animals in that zoo were able to escape when they really wanted. However, animals are similar to most people in some aspects. Life is good in the zoo and within the known areas. What is outside is unknown, perhaps scary, so why bother? Looks like the taunting was enough reason to bother for that tiger.
A well designed enclosure would have prevented this. The zoo is at fault. There is no question there.
What kind of enclosure would you actually need to keep an enranged and adrenaline fueled tiger in though.
However, the guy wasn't innocent. The tiger may not have attacked if he was behaving differently. There is a risk when you tease a 350lb killing machine. I see the fact he was doing that as important.
The way all mammals respond to threats is known as "flight or flight". Predators are likely to tend towards the former. There are few things an adult tiger will run from.
I contend that the enclosure was just fine. The tiger was content until he was taunted. This story had less to do with "how to contain a tiger" than "don't taunt the potentially man-eating tiger!" Note, he only went after those who taunted him! I'm not saying it was justified, but given that the tiger could hardly go to the authorities and his predisposition to violence he did what a tiger does back home.
Yes it is. Fuck that sick little shit, he absolutely deserved to die. Just ask yourself what kind of horrible mind it takes to enjoy teasing an animal that we've already put in a cage. Just how would you feel if somebody stuck you in a jail cell for your whole life, for no reason at all as far as you know, and then started flinging shit at you? Oh, and don't forget, you're 350-pounds of concentrated kinetic death.
I for one am glad that that fuckhead's cruelty is gone. The absolute foolishness and lack of respect that are also gone is just icing. Provided they weren't participating, the true tragedy is the two others that got mauled because of that dumb shit kid and the foolish zoo, and of course the tiger that had to be killed.
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This is an example of the tragedy of privatization.
How so? The fence is the same height today it was when it was a public zoo. The zoo was public when the fence was built. Seems a better case can be made that public zoos don't know how to design safe tiger enclosures.
Here's proof. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwQ4hDsP_jg
"The tiger didn't go crazy, that tiger went tiger!" --Chris Rock
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The asian elephant in this is about 12' tall. Back story: A tiger escaped from a preserve in India (Kaziranga National Park) and had killed a couple of farm animals. She was training her cubs to hunt. Rangers had found the cubs and took them (which I find incredibly stupid because now she's stressed and looking for them). Riding elephants, they found the female in the brush and tried to tranquilize her, but the dart missed. What happened next should give you and idea what the jerks in the SF zoo saw.
The elephant trainer survived, but was badly wounded.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
More tigers = fewer jackasses.
I don't see the problem.
What kind of enclosure would you actually need to keep an enranged and adrenaline fueled tiger in though.
;)
One that is several feet taller than this one was would have done it. Adrenaline isn't magic, and its performance boost is finite. It obeys the laws of physics like everything else.
The fact that the tiger was enraged doesn't mean that no cage could have held her. The sort of unlimited rage bonus your question seems to imply only comes into play if the tiger has been exposed to gamma rays.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Next, they leapt for the lame and wounded; I feared not for I was not hurt.
Next, they leapt for the young and tender; I feared not...
[
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. Inspectors from the AAZA (American Association of Zoos and Aquariums) were out two years ago and measured the walls of the enclosure, calling them adequate according to their standards. And they're the ones who write the book on these matters.
Still, it's a damned shame. For the tiger, that is. Not for the drunken nimrod who was teasing her, going so far as to pass the barriers erected to keep the public back from the animals, according to the evidence found at the scene.
To a certain extent it's true. Tigers and other big cats don't naturally consider human beings prey and will generally avoid them in the wild, but if they happen to discover how easy we are to kill, there's a marked amount of recidivism.
This enclosure was built in the thirties. It was just as dangerous during the ~60 years that it was a public zoo, as it was the last ~15 years as a private zoo. The Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which sets standards for zoo design, first started it's formal accreditation program in 1974. So they should have been aware of the problem for a good 20 years before it was privatized.
There does appear to be problems with the way the SF zoo is being operated now, but this particular case is a long standing condition that neither the public caretakers, private owners, nor the AZA made any effort to fix.
I dunno, if you stick your tongue in an electrical outlet, you deserve to get shocked. If you walk across a highway blindfolded, you deserve to get hit. If you taunt a tiger, you deserve to get mauled. If he didn't want to get mauled to death, he could have easily left the tiger alone.
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Assume a spherical tiger in a vacuum...
Err.. when you're a 600 pound (or whatever) tiger with a smallish wall, claws, high power-to-weight ratio and one of the most fearsome reputations in the animal kingdom, I think you have the advantage (in a fight at least).
which is totally what she said
Actually, the guy 400 yards away with the high-powered rifle has the advantage. As was verified in this case.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Quite tragic, as tigers are nearly extinct in the wild. Why does the myth of animals thirsting for human blood after killing a person continue to persist?
Because in the case of tigers, it is a very real danger? At least, a tiger who eats a human (whether the tiger killed the human or simply ran across a body) is liable to start to see humans as food, and a tiger will hunt and kill anything it sees as food.
This tiger didn't actually eat anyone... but it wasn't killed due to the fear of it being a future man-eater, it was killed because it was in the process of mauling two people after having killed one already, and when the police distracted it the tiger ran at them. Ideally they could have used tranquilizers, but this wasn't a planned recovery mission, it was an emergency response. It's hard for me to fault the police for doing their job of protecting people and themselves with the tools they had on hand when they showed up.
I agree though that this is exceedingly tragic. It's a disaster as far as I'm concerned. And the fools who mis-constructed (and mis-certified) the enclosure, and the retards who lacked the common sense to not taunt a large predator, directly contributed. Is there any hope for these animals in the face of simple, common, everyday human stupidity?
The enemies of Democracy are
Until someone sets up a camera.
And then some thin mesh wire.
Don't assume that animals are dumb because they live in water
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This is unfortunately true. An animal that has actually overcome its instincts of avoidance (often due to unfortunate necessity) and killed a human becomes much more likely to do it again. There are no animals that, in the wild, are naturally mankillers, but there have been many documented instances of certain individuals becoming mankillers. Whatever the circumstances were and how unfair they were that provoked the first attack, once an individual animal has killed a man successfully, it becomes much more likely to do it again and again. Sadly, it's usually some stupid man who's turned the animal into a mankiller, but the fact remains that the animal now is a mankiller, and needs to be dealt with accordingly. I don't mourn for the idiot who provokes and gets killed in the first place, but one must deal realistically with the animal to prevent future innocent victims.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Maybe you had the urge to taunt dangerous animals but I never did. If you feel like killing something then go hunting. I nominate the guy who died for a Darwin Award. Its a tiger, anything smaller and less powerful than it is food.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If you look at the link the parent posted ( http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/01/03/mn_grotto.jpg ) you can clearly see that the situation shown in the picture is vastly different from what the calculations looked at. Based on what is shown in the picture this was essentially a running long jump for the tiger. There was virtually no elevation involved, especially when you consider that she could easily pull herself up over the top if she was a couple of feet short. That diagram is very enlightening.
I guess we all know what to pack next time we go to the zoo then.
.. shooting *cough* pictures of distant animals"
"What's in that case sir?"
"Oh it's just my photography equipment. I have a very high long zoom lens for, uh
which is totally what she said
Clearing a 12.5 ft barrier at 33 ft away just didn't feel intuitively possible, so I found a projectile physics toy to test it:
Projectile Motion
In SI, the values are 12 m/s at an angle of 55 degrees with a mass of 160 kg, clearing a 3.8 m barrier at 10 m away.
I had some recollection that 45 degrees was the optimum launch angle, but apparently that maximizes distance, not height. Mass doesn't factor into the calculations unless you include air resistance, which the paper neglects.
The surprisingly sensitive factor is launch velocity. Lose 1 m/s and you smack into the middle of the wall. Gain 1 m/s and clear a 16 ft barrier, landing 52 ft away. It still seems phenomenal to actually get a tiger's horizontal velocity redirected at 55 degrees.
Well, we are in the realm of a the speculative here, since we are talking about things that might have happened if things were contrary to how they actually are.
However the current management of the zoo has everything to do with the height of the wall, even though the wall was built before the management took charge, because the wall was built before safety standards were established.
If the safety standards were established after the current management took charge, the older management was to blame; if it took place after the current management took charge, then both the current management and the old management are to blame, because the incoming management should have checked everything before taking over. One way or the other, the current management is "at fault" here. The old management might not have been at fault, if it were not known that tigers could clear such a wall at the time.
In any case, this is not really a valid test case for privatization, because the zoo is run as a partnership between the SF Parks department and the non-profit SF Zoological Society. It is the difference between non-profit and for-profit here that is critical, not the difference between government and private.
A well run non-profit should make the decision to evaluate the safety of its exhibits and address any problems in exactly the same way a well run government institution would. Either should determine whether the exhibits meet standards of safety and either correct any deficiencies, or close the exhibit. A well run for-profit would look at the decision in a risk/benefit context.
In fact, a well run for-profit takes these uncertainties and makes them quantifiable by buying insurance. If the insurance company misses the problem with the tiger enclosure, that's all to the good: the company gets a windfall savings. If the insurance company catches the problem, then you've got a simple NPV calculation between the investment and the premium differential. Either way, you plug the numbers into a spreadsheet, and if the spreadsheet says you go on with an unsafe exhibit, you do.
So, net net net, as they say, you can't conclude anything about the difference between private and public management by this event. You can conclude something about this management, which is that in this case at least it didn't do its job. If this were a private, for profit company they might well have been managing "properly", by concluding the wall was "probably" safe, and the cost of fixing the situation was higher than the probable benefit.
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I worked at a zoo in Chicago, and the Siberian Tigers were a concern. The distance between the habitat and the rest of us, seemed fine, would probably stand up to calculations, but never quite seemed enough for an animal bent on escape. When the things arrived at the zoo, I was photographing them, and the shear power of the roar was simply amazing. Standing outside of a steel box with the things in them didn't diminish the fact that they were there.
One night I was watching some European wolves pace around there cage, when one caught my eye. Eye contact bad! It walked slowly down the exhibit and launched at the wall hitting the top. I left quickly... The Mexican wolves were rumored to escape often.
People want to see the animals, and like everything else in this world it is a balance of risks. It's bad enough that the animals appear so sedate, but compound that with a realistic safe distance, and it would be a recipe for disaster. There was a reason they used bars back in the day.
Obviously the tiger evolved, and the zoo budget didn't include studies of the tiger's new superpowers. Same thing happened with the flying squirrel and the electric eel, but in those cases nobody died.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
We talked about this problem at length a while back in torts.
Basically, the subject here is one of civil liability. The kids - all under the age of 18 - all had alcohol and marijuana in their bloodstream at the time of the incident (according to police reports). Their alleged taunting could be used against them, not to completely excuse the zoo from guilt (although they'll try), but to reduce the damages. Generally speaking as to torts, a jury can find a defendant partially liable for their own injuries.
I don't think there's too much question here as to the zoo's liability - they failed to build a wall capable of keeping the tiger in, and failed to keep their team of snipers (as per their own emergency plan) on the zoo during all times it was open. But, the zoo will pen its hopes on the theory above, arguing that the kids are at least partially liable. They do have a point - this tiger has certainly faced taunting in the past, and no results like this occurred. But the case for the kids, I think, is a much better. one.
The zoo knows it's trying to shoot the moon by removing full liability from itself, but they could have a reasonable shot at reducing the damages if it goes to court.
Not to be a pedant but Polar Bears in their natural habitat will actively hunt humans.
And, they're right.
Here's a list of other stuff (in case you weren't following all the articles) they did just that day;
- waited for the Zoo to empty out (premeditated)
- collected tools to do the task (slingshot, and something else (i forgot)
- drove drunk (open container of vodka in the car) to the zoo
- stayed around after zoo was closed (trespassing)
- climbed over a barrier designed to protect animals from humans
- lied to police about what happened
- clamed up, lawyered up right away
Those asshats deserved to die just from the drunk driving alone. Acting in such a way that causes an endangered animal to be killed brutally by police, while two of them (India-Indians) should know damn well what tigers can do, yeah, that pretty much adds up to NO sympathy.
These asshats deserved to die. Just like those asshats that drove off the end of the Travolta's runway deserved to die. The human race is better off without them.
This is not just kids fooling around tying cans to the neighbor's dogs tail. It's real, bona fide criminal activity and animal abuse.
"Evolution in action."
-- the citizens of Todos Santos
The autopsy done on the tiger showed shattered and broken claws from scrambling over the concrete. The tiger didn't just do some anime style super-leap, she got claws on the edge and pulled herself up, shattering claws in the process. This was not a happy tiger that these 3 douchebags happened to get caught by. She was pissed off and looking to confront her tormentors.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
I'm saying the tiger escape is part of a pattern that has occurred ever since the zoo was privatized. It's the tragedy of privatization: people can simply run a business or resource into the ground, take the profits and invest them in the next looting spree. With publicly owned resources, people all share the resource and want it to last because they enjoy it. Private ownership encourages fraud, short sighted cost cutting, and externalizing every expense you can.
Back when the zoo was built, no one knew the enclosure height was a problem. Now, with a private, profit driven entity controlling the zoo, you might think they have an incentive to avoid lawsuits. But what they really have an incentive to do is profit, and if that means letting people die because lawsuits are cheaper than building a replacement enclosure, then so be it. With a public zoo like we have here in Albuquerque, they are more worried about educating the public, conserving species diversity, and yes, their image, than they are about making money.
Sorry to challenge your free market ideology like that, but privatization sucks because profit over everything as a motive sucks. Modern economic research shows that most non-sociopaths are driven more by ideals of fairness and reciprocity than personal gain, so they will not try to profit over all else. What our system actually does is encourage sociopaths.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
1) This is the same tiger (Tatiana) that attacked and seriously injured a zookeeper (Lori Komejan) who was only doing her job just one year ago. The zoo initially blamed the attack on the zoo keeper.
From a later article:
2) Zoo director Manuel Mollinedo is incompetent and demoralizing:
3) The zookeepers knew the wall was too low:
4) The police didn't find any slingshots in the cars or on the brothers, anything unusual on their cellphones, foreign objects in the enclosure, or any witnesses to back up any suggestion of taunting, and suspended the investigation.
You can find more articles in the special section that SFGate has just for the tiger mauling.
But people will believe whatever they want to believe, right?
Am I the only one who finds it fascinating that the ONLY ones the tiger directly attacked were the 3 guys who were taunting it? That it specifically hunted down the 3 individuals who pissed it off? And they had moved away from the area...
Who says animals are stupid?
That person had been taunting the tiger; the tiger wasn't just going after people randomly, it targeted specific people for a reason.
The cop should have let the tiger just do what it wanted, until they could find a tranquilizer gun so they could get it back to the cage. As the other guy said, there's 6.5 billion people on the planet, and very few tigers. Tigers are endangered animals. People in a zoo should realize that wild animals are dangerous, and if they get out, it's them versus the animal. Humans shouldn't get any special rights against the animals when they knowingly put themselves in that situation.
Considering that this tiger had already attacked humans multiple times before, are you really so naive and falsely optimistic as to think tigers never go around indiscriminately killing? Have you ever owned a cat??? http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/07/tiger.attack/index.html#cnnSTCText "Inspector Valerie Matthews said the investigation had found no evidence that Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal taunted a 350-pound tiger"
-Clio
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Physicist conducts analysis, concludes that thing which already happened is theoretically possible.
Every follow-up article (which people don't usually bother to read) has said that the investigation concluded THERE WAS NO TAUNTING. That was just FUD on the zoo's part. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/07/tiger.attack/index.html#cnnSTCText
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Actually, in this case it was SF police officers with .40 sidearms. I imagine that they were able to win only because there were so many rounds expended, as handgun rounds are hardly adequate for this sort of animal.
In any case, most folks believe that human life is more important than animal life, so when a police officer arrives to find a "rare" tiger mauling a "common" human, you can't be surprised when he opts to kill kill the freaking cat. The suggestion that the lives of a few humans should be willfully sacrificed to preserve the life of an animal flies against our built-in desire to preserve our race, so don't expect to be popular when you make it.
Every follow-up article (which people don't usually bother to read) has said that the investigation concluded THERE WAS NO TAUNTING. That was just FUD on the zoo's part. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/07/tiger.attack/index.html#cnnSTCText
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Or as a friend of mine commented, "If they were six-foot cuddly bunny-rabbits, we'd have called them bunny-rabbits, not tigers!"
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Humans have pathetic jumping ability, even the basketball stars, compared to cats (or most animals for that matter). Humans' advantage is their bipedal nature and the flexibility that offers for things like climbing, carrying large objects, etc. For things like running and jumping, we simply suck. My housecats could outrun me.
House cats can easily jump a 6-foot wall. I see it all the time here in Phoenix, where all our back yards are separated by 6-foot block walls, and it's common to see cats running around on top of them. This is for a cat which stands less than 12" at the shoulder and weighs 10 pounds or less. A Siberian tiger weighs 300-450 pounds. These animals are huge, and they're at least as well-muscled as a housecat. It makes perfect sense that they could jump over the wall at this zoo, given sufficient motivation.
If you've ever had the privilege of being very close to a large cat, you'd have a better appreciation of their size and musculature. I got to sit next to a cage with a mountain lion at a zoo once (one of the zookeepers let me in the back to see it); mountain lions aren't anywhere near as large as tigers, maybe about the size of a large dog, except that they have FAR more muscle than any dog of that height and length. I wouldn't ever want to tangle with a mountain lion; it's possible to fight one off if you have to, but many people have been killed by them in the wild, and many others severely injured. Tigers are much bigger than this; fighting with a tiger is like fighting with a bear. You're probably going to lose.
The number of tigers in zoos is about 4000.
As many as 3000 tigers may be in farms in China, being raised to sell as traditional medicine for people whose penises aren't big enough or who think their bones will make them stronger.
The number of tigers that are kept as pets by Americans is about 6000. There are animal activists like Tippi Hedren trying to make laws against keeping tigers as pets, because almost nobody who has pet tigers has enough space and resources to let them live like tigers need to, especially the occasional drug dealer in some apartment building in New York who wanted to out-macho his competitors' pit bulls. She's well-intentioned, but the species needs all the genetic diversity it can get, even though tigers aren't meant to live like house-cats.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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But now the tiger is out of his cage, and the guy standing beside the idiot who was taunting the tiger is also in danger, along with probably a lot of other people who just happened to be at the zoo that day. What about all those people?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The real reason the wall worked that long is that none of the tigers had previously felt motivated enough to jump at it. Apparently Siberians are more aggressive than Bengals, and maybe the two drunk kids pissed her off or just acted enough like prey or cat toys that she went for them. My cats sit on the couch looking out the window at Bird TV, and when one of them sees a laser pointer red dot he has to jump for it without thinking about it first (the other one says "Hey, stop wavin' that thing around".) And I've seen zoo leopards looking at the crowds, intensely tracking the smaller ones that get separated a bit from their herds; I'd feel much safer around tigers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Please use the proper left-focused lenses when reading Slashdot. Unauthorized eyewear prohibited.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
It doesn't matter *how* you create the mankilling tiger. Yes, so sad for the tiger, but you can be damn sure I'll choose for the tiger to die over any human life.
And contrary to popular thought, this wasn't the first time the tiger mauled somebody. It had mauled one of the zoo staff prior to being taunted by this punk kid. It's fair to say that this previous incident lowered the tiger's threshold for going on a kill frenzy.
Yelling and waving is taunting?!? Most people I've talked to assumed taunting meant some type of physical abuse (Throwing rocks). If their "Taunting" is simply yelling and waving their arms, then that makes me think it's pretty much 0% their fault. Hell, yelling and waving arms usually REPELS animals, even predators -- even bears.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
also we must define taunting. physical taunting, or just yelling? The word apparently makes most people think of *physical* attack. If it's just yelling, then I'm quite pissed at all the people who somehow think it's acceptable that the tiger did this. "Oh, he's just being a tiger, doing what tigers do!" Yes, well, so were the humans.. Under the expectation that a zoo would not release a wild animal on them. And would at least have a goddamned security guard with a tranquilizer gun! WTF! The ambulance wouldn't even come until the police arrived because everyone was so scared. If the authorities can't deal with a situation, then that just puts more onus on the zoo to have someone on hand at all times who can deal with such threats. If we have cops tasering elementary school children, we can certainly have a security guard with a tranq-gun in a zoo. Zoo's fault. 100%.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
It doesn't matter. We all know it'd be a kangaroo court.
When someone says, "Any fool can see