Year Ends With Zoos in News

When I was growing up I remember the same thing being generally said about cheetahs and mountain lions. Either of those animals would have no trouble with a small child – which they rarely get the opportunity to take – and of course the latter has killed adults.

The elevation and remoteness of snow leopard habitat makes human targets of opportunity very rare. But I’d certainly be very much on the alert were I on my own in snow leopard country.

In fact, this whole conversation has me paying attention. I’m now at a New Year’s get-together out at my sister’s place in West Virginia. There’s a few dogs here, including a Rottweiler, a big one. The Rott was around my bed last night, making a few sounds that were suspiciously like growls. I was on edge. When I found him lying on my sleeping bag this morning, OK, so I’m squeamish about huge dogs lying on my stuff, I was extremely glad when my simple request that he move was promptly complied with.

As you said, kittenz, you don’t know what will set one off.

Another time at the Cincy Zoo, I was in the Cat House, at the caracal exhibit. At the time they had 3 or 4 caracals. I wore glasses at that time, and on the way to the zoo that day I had dropped my glasses, breaking the frame. Fortunately, since I couldn’t drive without corrective lenses, I had a pair of prescription sunglasses with me. They had very dark, oversized lenses. I put on my sunglasses in order to be able to see the caracals (which were in a naturalistic habitat, behind glass). One of the caracals immediately bristled up, laid back her ears, and hissed at me. Then she, acting for all the world like an angry Halloween cat, walked right up to the glass, never taking her eyes off my facel, hissed and spat again, and slapped the glass with her paw.

A colleague, who had worked with the cats at the zoo for several years, later told me that caracal was normally “the sweetest cat in the world”, and that she was about 14 years old at the time and not known for aggressive behavior. I guess the cat thought that she was suddenly confronted with a strange animal and not her more familiar crowd of people, and that is what triggered the aggressive behavior.

I have some beautiful photos of one of their snow leopards, in his outdoor habitat, stalking my nephew (only the snow leopard is in the photos). My nephew was eight at the time and he has ADHD. That cat completely ignored me, and it ignored other adults who were watching it. But when my nephew started to move around, that cat went from lazy snoozing to outright stalking in a flash. He seemed to flow up and down the rocks in his habitat, leaping gracefully and soundlessly from behind one rock to behind another. He seemed to be in a very playful mood. But I have no doubt whatsoever that had there not been heavy chain link between them, the cat would have pounced on my nephew like a housecat after a mouse.

Interestingly enough, at the Cincinnati Zoo, while the tigers are in walled, moated outdoor enclosures, and lions and cheetahs are in big outdoor habitats that are fenced but not roofed, the snow leopards habitats are fully enclosed by heavy chain link, including a chain link roof. I suppose their extreme leaping ability precludes keeping them in a moated enclosue.

No kidding, kittenz. I was at the zoo in Tacoma, WA a few years back, watching a snow leopard. For whatever reason, a couple of keepers were leading a small ungulate – pretty sure it was a young reindeer – past the leopard’s cage, and not even that close to the cage. We all know how predators in zoo cages will generally not even seem to register the people outside except to regard them unconcernedly. This cat went into full stalk mode, focused like a laser on the reindeer. It’s as if those two animals were the only ones there.

People can get pretty lazy – not even sure stupid is the word here – about animals in zoos. They don’t act as if they’re really all there. They’re more there than you think they are.

Now it comes out that the wall was only 12 feet high – a relatively easy height for an agitated tiger to jump. Plus there was inconsistency in what the zoo director said was the width of the moat. AND now they say that there really wasn’t a shoe or clothing found in the moat.

Sounds like an attempt at a coverup to me.

Those boys probably WERE horsing around and doing stupid stuff like meowing at the tigers or calling “kitty kitty” to them. Heck, they’re BOYS – even at 23 they’re arguably not fully adult men – and that is what teenaged boys do. Whether the behavior was malicious or even threatening to the tigers, however, is unclear. Maybe they were just romping around, and the tiger chased the movement, made a leap, and then panicked when she found that she had actually leapt out of her familiar habitat.

Big cats in zoos are still cats. They will perk up and chase movement, especially the rapid, jerky movement of kids; I have used that to my advantage to get very good photos when I’ve had children with me at zoos. You can bet your boots I’ll never be so complacent about that again.

I feel so bad for the dead boy’s parents. At least the kid must have died almost instantly, it does not seem that he would have lived for long with his throat torn out. But I imagine what if it had been one of my teenaged boys, goofing around at the zoo, and then suddenly in the middle of a nightmare.

The AZA accredited that zoo. The minimum height for walls in tiger enclosures, by AZA standards, is 16.4 feet. I would think that at some point over the years the AZA inspectors would have measured the wall, but I guess it would not be realistic to think that they can measure every wall in every zoo. Realistically, I guess they have to rely on what the zoo tells them about the height of the walls, etc., but if the zoo said the wall was 20 feet high, that is nearly twice as high as it actually is. Surely they would spot that big a difference?

I guess they’ll measure them now.