Comments on SF Tiger Attack
Story changes from "how horrible!"
to
"HA HA" (Simpson's bully voice)
Too funny! And glad they were thinned from the herd. That is genetic material that votes Republican!
Aoowwh I can never stay mad at you cute little kitty!
Grampa Darwin says you gotta get out of the gene pool now!
They're Grrrrrrreat!
Too bad for the tiger...
random comment: sometimes I wish the slog page wasn't about 1.5 megabytes so that it would load faster.
stinkbug: It's the embedded YouTube videos that make it so slow. Get Firefox, then install the NoScript extension, then block YouTube. Enjoy.
The animal must always die. Thus the Empire is maintained.
Sources said pinecones and sticks that were found in the moat might have been thrown at the animal. Those items could not have landed in the grotto naturally, they said.
The two survivors should be fed alive to the remaining tigers. Get them out of the gene pool now.
All @ All:
Everybody should be using Firefox. It's so far superior to every other browser out there, it's almost inconceivable.
I love throwing shit at tigers. I also love throwing shit on the sidewalk. I love being a little bitch and letting everything go to waste. I also like pooping on Dan Savage's lawn. Then eating it. To, you know, get rid of the evidence.
Too bad the guards killed the wrong animal(s).
I'm using firefox already. The embedded youtubes aren't the main source of the bloat.
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I think we should have a big NYE party at the zoo - I'll bring the firecrackers if y'all bring the booze and music - I heard animals really like that - I'm sure it'll make a GREAT party!
Just so I have it straight:
1. The preferred penalty for (alleged) tiger-teasing is death.
2. Blaming the victims is okay again (finally! Break out the burqas!).
3. The SF Zoo should bear no responsibility for making a pen the tiger could escape from. Because, the Tiger was teased. Allegedly.
Do I have it straight?
I hate zoos. They need to be abolished.
16,
if - IF - the kids were in fact taunting the tiger, the role of "victim" here is dubious at best. doesn't mean they deserve death, but when you're fucking around with animals that can eat you, well... you may not "deserve" it, but you should certainly "expect" it.
and if - IF - the kids were fucking around with the pen, they may have made it possible for the tiger to escape. it's not like this is something that happens everyday.
@ 16: No, fucknut, you don't have it straight.
1. The preferred penalty for (alleged) tiger-teasing is death. Yes. Preferrably death by tiger. It isn't bad enough that this magnificent animal is held in zoo, but some asshole has to come around throwing shit at it?
2. Blaming the victims is okay again (finally! Break out the burqas!). Not the same thing (obviously). By definition, the victim does not encourage and facilitate the attack.
3. The SF Zoo should bear no responsibility for making a pen the tiger could escape from. The Zoo did make a pen from which a tiger could not escape, provided that some dumbshit human doesn't dangle his fucking leg over the moat giving said tiger something to grab onto.
Asshole.
MonkeyNose @ 18
Just so I have it straight:
1. The preferred penalty for (alleged) tiger-teasing is death.
2. Blaming the victims is okay again (finally! Break out the burqas!).
3. The SF Zoo should bear no responsibility for making a pen the tiger could escape from. Because, the Tiger was teased. Allegedly.
Do I have it straight?
Let's take your post point by point, shall we?
1) Actually I think the preferred penalty for tiger teasing should be mauling, then death, but that's just me (well me and much of Slog judging from the posts here). What kind of stupid fucks tease zoo animals?
2) Yes, it's OK to blame the victims if they're victims of their own stupidity. I will submit that teasing a caged zoo animal is an assholish thing to do and that teasing a caged zoo animal that can kill and eat you is an incredibly stupid and assholish thing to do. I will also submit that attempting to compare the situation of women in the Middle East, which is what I assume your comment about "Break out the burqas!" was all about is incredibly assholish and that you deserve to be punished by being fed to a tiger.
3) Let's see, this tiger sat in that pen for years and years and never broke out and killed anyone until these fucktards came along. Interestingly enough according to the news report the tiger chased down and killed the one guy and then tracked the other two ignoring the other zoo patrons. I wonder why? Could it be that they pissed the tiger off badly enough that it decided to get out of it's pen?
yeah, i thought that was pretty cool how the tiger actively hunted down the other 2 guys. makes ya think, don't it?
God how I wish someone had a YouTube of this.
Assuming the taunting theory is correct, the maulees certainly brought it on themselves. That said...
Did anyone RTFA and notice the history of incidents at the SF Zoo at the bottom? They've averaged an incident every two years or so for the past 3 decades (16 since 1967, only slightly less frequent in recent years), and it seems clear they were ill prepared for this latest escape.
Does anyone know if or how much these numbers are atypical?
Mike in MO @ 22,
I'm sure some video footage of this will be coming along shortly. In this day and age I can't imagine there is anywhere without security cameras and at least one zoo patron will have had a camera phone. Not to mention that local news agencies were probably buzzing the place in choppers as soon as the 911 call went out.
What I want to know is, since their buddy got killed, will the two survivors be charged with anything? If it can be proved that they were harrassing the animal and helped it escape. What kind of jail time do you get when the deadly weapon is a blunt force tiger?
Yucca @24, one of issues prominently cited in the article is the zoo's complete lack of security cameras around the cats.
i read that there were NO zoo cameras pointed at the tiger & lion enclosures. unless our young male victims filmed their own demise, i wouldn't hold my breath - they only acted so boldly because no one was watching them.
@24: Not only doesn't the zoo have surveillance cameras, but it was past closing time and there were only a handful of patrons left in the zoo. I think if there were video, it would have surfaced by now.
@23: Almost all of those incidents involve zoo staff, who work in close proximity to the animals and are neccessarily at higher risk. There are only three unprovoked patron injuries in the zoo's entire history. None since the mid-70's.
According to the last show on PBS about tigers. We don't really know what their full physical abilities are. That tiger sat around in that pen for years. All she needed was a good enough reason to jump the distance. Some stupid jerk decided to give her one. How many times has someone been taunting her over the years?
MORAL: If you mess around with something that can eat you, sooner or later you are going to get eaten! Sorry the kid died, sorrier the cat died. How many times over the years has this kid "proved" how much of a man he was by doing this very same thing?
IF, that is what happened, one less democrat we have to worry about.
jhood @28:
IF, that is what happened, one less democrat we have to worry about.
Wow, that's sick and wrong even for Slog comments.
And it forgets that it's the Bible Belt where "Hey y'all, watch this!" are such famous last words.
Zebras are, statistically, the most dangerous animals in a zoo.
I was at the SF Zoo a few months ago. It's always been pretty rickety, kinda like you'd expect a city zoo from (the 70's?) to be, but this is still pretty crazy. I would have been more nervous of the great apes, if I had to choose.
Also to those who say they hate the zoo because it's depressing. Please visit the zoo, pay your admission, help them make it a better place for the animals. Zoos aren't going anywhere, and a broke zoo is a terrible place for its animals.
I it's little kids you hate, well then that's fine, don't go to the zoo.
Margaret L. @27:
@23: Almost all of those incidents involve zoo staff, who work in close proximity to the animals and are neccessarily at higher risk. There are only three unprovoked patron injuries in the zoo's entire history. None since the mid-70's.
That's a good point, and it's largely behind my wondering if the numbers are atypical.
I would argue, though, that the often-major staff injuries count, and that the "unprovoked" qualifier reads like a way of obscuring the extent of the problem, particularly when used to screen out the two injuries and one fatality from two days ago, where the provocation is at this point still a hypothesis.
The insurance defense lawyers are gonna have a field day with this info.
Too bad for the tiger.
Let this be a lesson.
Be kind to those we think are lower on the food chain.
In most cases, they are not.
Gheeezuz young men can be so stupid. It's a good thing there is one less of that kind. I feel the sweet satisfaction the Tiger must have had before it punished that loser.
You know, speculating on whether the kids were torturing the tiger, and if they did how much they had getting mauled coming to them seems reasonable. Speculating on their political affiliation as a justification for attack by 800 pounds of stripy aggression? That's a little creepy.
#35 - Tigers are closer to 300 lbs, but "800 Pounds of Stripy Aggression" would have been an awesome name the for new Gossip album.
What? She started it!
Actually, @30, there is reason to hope that zoos will be abolished someday. Lord, at least I hope so. There is no good reason for a zoo to exist, at all.
Grrlzilla: There is no good reason for zoos to exist at all? Really? 'Cause I can think of a couple right off the top of my head:
1.Zoos are the only place that kids are likely to see many varieties of wild animals. Somebody who has seen a tiger might be more inclined to participate in efforts to preserve the habitat of said tiger. At least it worked that way for me.
2.Zoos will be the only place to house varieties of animals, such as tigers, after they are extinct in the wild. Going to look at the genetically-engineered animals in zoos will be an educational reminder of how unbelievably stupid our own species can be.
3.Where else can children have the educational experience of a real-life mauling?
#37. Actually, zoos - at least in America - are general leaders in animal conservation. Zoos have done more to preserve natural habitats abroad than most local governments.
They should be strictly regulated of course, and certain animals are being phased out of captivity (elephants, here in California) that are particularly badly suited for it.
Most animals are complicated and feeling, but there's a fair amount of anthropomorphism on a lot of peoples' part that makes them draw the wrong conclusion about how animals are living.
Animal circuses, should DEFINITELY be banned, however.
@36-You're probably right since the tiger was female (males weigh over 600 pounds pretty routinely).
And come to think of it that would be a sorta cool name...but that's not the point! The kid that died wasn't voting-age yet anyway! Political affiliation should not be used to predict animal maulings.
@38 and 39--I disagree heartily. Just found this website yesterday that addresses those myths you're saying: http://www.noazark.org/
lostboy @31: I didn't leave out the present attacks because they were (possibly) provoked. I left them out because the issue was the zoo's history, prior to the present attacks. In other words, should the zoo have known better? Was this a freak accident, or part of a pattern? (The only one I actually screened out as "provoked" involved an idiot climbing the fence and falling into the moat.)
I really don't think there's a case to be made for a pattern. Whether protections for zoo staff are adequate is a separate question. They are in restricted areas doing hands-on jobs, and it really doesn't bear on patron safety. So the only cases on which to build a pattern occurred in 1949, 1972, and 1976.
#40 - I stand corrected. I didn't realize tigers got as large as that, I just keep reading the reports on that particular tiger
GRRLZILLA - This could go back and forth forever, so we'll have to agree to disagree. Just keep in mind, the large majority of the people handling in charge of care for these animals in zoos care greatly for them, are experts in their field, often with Doctorate's from accredited Universities and decades of experience. Like the moon landing, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc., you could find a website to "disprove" just about anything. That one looks particularly hastily assembled (most of the links don't even work) and emotionally driven.
There are of course zoo horror stories, just are there are prison, school, and workplace horror stories that aren't at all analogous to what we're talking about here.
I agree with Beguine @35 and @40. In case I've been misunderstood, let me clarify: When I wrote @29:
And it forgets that it's the Bible Belt where "Hey y'all, watch this!" are such famous last words.
I was adding a stones-from-glass-houses criticism to jhood's comment @28. I have neither insight nor interest in the politics of the dead teen (though I do predict him a leading candidate for this year's Darwin award).
Margaret L. @42:
Whether protections for zoo staff are adequate is a separate question.
Ok, it's a separate question. Does the comparatively small number of patron injuries somehow make the question of staff safety not worth asking?
Grrlzilla @ 41: That hastily slapped-together website has opened my eyes to the "horrors of animails(sic) in captivity." I'm off to free the fishes in the aquarium now.
Okay, dumb website. I wouldn't give a ton of credit to people with doctorates, just because they've earned that degree. Not the pull the Hitler card, but plenty of Nazis had advanced degrees.
Even without the backing of the unprofessional website, I feel it is wrong to deprive these magnificent creatures of their freedom. So sue me.
Why, oh why did I have to pull the Hitler card? I hate it when I do that.
If animals are kept in cages--like animals!--the Nazis will have won?
Grrlzilla @47, you didn't have to play the Hitler card, but you did, and in a specious way.
Dougsf @43 was making the point that the people running zoos aren't a bunch of know-nothings who learn only enough about the animals to not kill their attractions. You try to discredit the good will indicated by the effort and expense and such advanced education, but unless "plenty of Nazis" had advanced degrees in the care and feeding of captive Jews, your analogy is false (not to mention grossly ad hominem).
there's a fine line between conservation efforts and putting beautiful animals on display for people to gawk at. i don't know if any of you have been to the SF zoo, but for such a "progressive" city, the state of the zoo is quite alarming. i'm just grateful they got rid of the elephant exhibit. they always made me so sad.
it stands in stark comparison to a place like the san diego zoo [which i've never been to], where the animals are not kept in small enclosures, or in close proximity to the zoo's visitors. [i could be completely wrong here, but this is what i recall from joan embrey's tonight show appearances...]
Make that "...the effort and expense of such advanced education..."
The preview button is only your friend if you actually bother to proofread. -_-;
One of the funniest things I ever saw was a sign at Woodland Park Zoo on Halloween that said "Please do not wear your masks! They are scaring the monkees"
Okay okay!
At least I know how to use apostrophes. Will you give me that much?
With or without the Hitler card, just because people have education doesn't mean they are good, kind, or far-seeing regarding animals. Or anything else.
#50 - the San Diego Zoo totally rules! Other than the whether, it's best reason I can think of to visit The Whales Vagina.
Oops, "weather".
#50 >>there's a fine line between conservation efforts and putting beautiful animals on display for people to gawk at.
I agree. Put the millions that go into zoo enclosures into conservation IN THE WILD and let the kiddies be entertained/educated by HDTV. The time has come to realize that wildlife belongs in the wild.
kman says it so much better than I did. Thank you.
And you didn't even have to invoke Hitler.
Isn't it a bit harsh to condemn the teenager, even if he was provoking the tiger (which has not been proven)? The poor guy is dead! I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fact that this tiger mauled her keeper (and ate her arm before being subdued) about one year ago. Anyways, I understand the arguments about provoking a wild animal, but the zoo was fined one year ago for safety violations related to the keeping of this tiger. There is certainly some responsibility to be borne there.
It's totally harsh to condemn the victim, taunting or none. The zoo shouldn't have been so careless in their design to let this happen.
To be totally honest though, I think as soon as the report said "17 year old boy from San Jose and his two friends, brothers", everyone sorta collectively groaned and rolled their eyes. Which is also unfair and cold hearted, but I'm guilty of it as well.
Isn't it a bit harsh to condemn the teenager, even if he was provoking the tiger...
Nope.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fact that this tiger mauled her keeper.
It may have been alluded to. Besides, the zoo took responsibility for that attack. They failed to keep the zookeeper safe, the tiger only did what comes naturally to her. There's no evidence to suggest that the tiger was unusually aggressive. There's a shitload of evidence to suggest that those teenagers provoked the animal.
Grllzilla @ 47
Why, oh why did I have to pull the Hitler card? I hate it when I do that.
I don't know, perhaps it's because you're a stupid fucking cunt who advanced a lame argument and then attempted to bolster it by linking to a lame website.
The way the press is going it is exactly like the palleywood calling these 3 men “boys” or “teens”.
Also the cowardance is the same as was displayed by the Afghanistan Zoo where peopek were allowed to go into the zoo and taunt and harm caged animals. If these 2 men are NOT charged with the death of both the tiger and Sousa, then we as a nation are no different than the Afghanstan zoo in that we did not protect the caged animals.
Evidently the 3 men taunted the tiger and unfortunately the tiger paid with her life. Probably the other tigers are going to be traumatized by the death of the female tiger. What creeps, and it is too bad that the tiger didn’t at least finish off the brothers before she was shot dead.
If it is found out that there was taunting, these 2 creeps should be charged with the cost/death of the tiger as well as the death of Sousa. I think tresspassing and taunting at a zoo is against the law. Heartbroken about the death of the tiger and the lack of protection for the tigers and the harassment of the tigers.
Getting burned is an occupational hazard of acting like an asshole.
Huh, looks like the animal rights nuts are out. I too am heartbroken at this horrible tragedy--a tiger killed!
Yay, a witness came forward. Now maybe we can tell the criminal gang-banger brothers to shove their lawsuit. They crossed the railing like the morons they are, and threw rocks, etc. They should take their pathetic lives and be happy to have THAT. How about some truth and personal responsibility? Lying little creeps. The zoo should counter-sue. That zoo was built in 1940 and never had any problems before, but I guess these idiots broke the record for moron of 60+ years. ILMAO.
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