Tatiana, a tiger that mauled a zookeeper last year, escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo on Tuesday, killing one man and injuring two others before police shot her dead, authorities said.
It’s the latest deadly or frightening incident involving captive animals in the United States. It seems that wild animals, kept in captivity, are still wild animals. Go figure.
Well, here are some other wild animals in captivity attack stories …
February 24, 2007: A 140-pound jaguar named Jorge fatally mauls a zookeeper at the Denver Zoo before being shot to death. Zoo officials said later that zookeeper Ashlee Pfaff had violated the rules by opening the door to the animal’s cage.
December 22, 2006: Tatiana reaches through her cage’s iron bars and mauls a female zookeeper during a public feeding at the San Francisco Zoo.
December 22, 2006: The National Zoo in Washington is briefly shut down after a clouded leopard bolts from a wire-mesh enclosure. It is found snoozing just outside the exhibit 30 minutes later.
November 29, 2006: Trainer Kenneth Peters, 39, is bitten and held underwater several times by a 7,000-pound killer whale during a show at Shamu Stadium at SeaWorld Adventure Park in San Diego. Peters escaped with a broken foot. The 17-foot-long orca is the dominant female of SeaWorld San Diego’s seven killer whales. She had attacked Peters on two prior occasions, in 1993 and 1999.
September 10, 2005: Three chimpanzees from Zoo Nebraska are shot and killed after they escape from their enclosure and could not be captured. A padlock on the cage was not completely closed after being cleaned, officials at the zoo in Royal, Nebraska, said.
March 3, 2005: Two chimpanzees at the Animal Ranch wildlife sanctuary near Bakersfield, California, attack a man and his wife, maiming the man. The chimps were then shot to death.
July 13, 2004: A state wildlife officer fatally shoots a 600-pound tiger that escaped from the property of former Tarzan actor Steve Sipek in Loxahatchee, Florida.
March 18, 2004: A 340-pound gorilla named Jabari breaks out of his enclosure at the Wilds of Africa exhibit at the Dallas Zoo and goes on a 40-minute rampage through a forest, snatching up a toddler with his teeth and attacking three other people before being shot to death by officers.
October 3, 2003: Illusionist Roy Horn is severely mauled by a tiger during the Siegfried & Roy nightly show at The Mirage casino in Las Vegas, biting him in the neck and dragging him off stage.
September 28, 2003: A 300-pound gorilla named Little Joe escapes from his enclosure at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo, attacking a 2-year-old girl and a teen-age zoo employee, before being tranquilized. It was the second time in two months that the animal escaped.
August 7, 2002: A catwalk over a shark tank collapses at New Orleans’ Aquarium of the Americas, throwing 10 visitors into the water. The 10, including four children, thrash around in terror for up to 15 minutes with the sharks swimming beneath their kicking feet before being pulled out. No one is seriously hurt.
Carbon neutral pledge:
Powered by FireStats