Nicole, as for oscar, i think it would of been the dumn kid that let your dog out's fault. What if Oscar was hit by a car while you were out. You can't blame yourself for thinking your dog is safe in the backyard he's locked into, human beings, i don't care what age, are intelligent enough to know not to do certain things. but good for you taking such safety measures anyway. Now as for the tiger, If the tiger jumped out of his cage, i blame those responisble for designing, and maintaining the cage, but to blame the individual keepers at the zoo is not right either, for all you know every keeper that saw that fence told the director it was too short, you assume a keeper at a zoo could order a cage be rebuilt and it would happen. As for someone letting it out, which was not the situation here, i personaly would blame those who let it out. As for the kids, No, i don't feel sorry for them. As for the tiger, i feel very sorry for it. i'd rather the three kids had gone then that one tiger. It actualy angers me that the zoo put it down a little, they killed the tiger hoping people would rally behind them and blame the tiger more than the zoo.

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"Nobody can do Everything, but Everybody can do Something."

Oscar is a large male sulcata tortoise.

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I have sucker tattood on my forehead

It's not a blame game. Any animal that has killed a human and has tasted human blood has to be put down. After that incident, The handlers are no longer safe taking care of the animal.

interesting,,,, thought Og,, I am not sure about how your zoos are up there,, but they dont "handle" them up here. If you look in the back of their enclosures they have a door that the cats go into which leads to another cage that the public does not see. When they are securely locked in those back cages, they then go into the exhibit and do whatever maintenence and such they need to do. After all that is done they are the released back into the habitat. With vet care and such they are tranquilized before anyone evn goes in with them.
That was another question I was just pondering,, where were the tranquilizers with this incident,,, zoos must have a ton of it and have it prepared for accidents,,,,,hmmm just a thought though...

Ryanpb,,,
As far as the kids go,,, there is not one person on here that can say they did not do anything stupid as a child,, or teenager. If we all suffered the same consequences they did when we did something stupid,, there would not be many people left on Earth, lol. I am by no means agreeing with what they did, I just dont think death was the answer for the kid,, a little old school buttwhoopin,, like we had as a kid might have done the trick, lol. It could have been any ones kid,, as much as we teach our kids and they no better,, sometimes when they are out with their friends all braincells seem to be gone.
None the less, it is the responsibility of the zoo or anyone who has animals to keep them contained for the safety of the public,, it is the law. I am responsible for mine.
As far as human beings being intelligent enough to know better at any age,, I will have to politely disagree. One of the kids was a 5 year old boy,, I dont think he had the mental capacity to determine that Oscar could have taken off his finger had he tried to feed him anything,, He was just curious because I had a "BIG Turtle" He had never seen anything like that before I moved in.
The error on my part was underestimating the 5 year old, lol.

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I have sucker tattood on my forehead

Thats nonsense! For one thing it wasn't the zoo that killed the tiger but rather the Police that responded to the situation. The reason they shot the tiger had nothing to do with public relations! The tiger was shot and killed because it was right next to one of the injured victims. It was guarding it's kill! They had to kill it because the had to get to the bloody body that was laying there! They had a situation that had to be IMMEDIATELY controlled.

As far as the keepers interacting with them. They actually showed a video clip of a keeper walking among the tigers in the enclosure. And this same tiger had injured a keeper previously.
I have seen keepers in our zoos inside the enclosure with the tigers, spraying them with water from a hose and basicly "playing" with them. There does seem to be an emerging tendency to take a more hands off policy with the animals. However you have to realize that many of the animals in zoos have been raised in zoo nursery's by human keepers.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

The only reason I even know that the zoo up here does not "handle" their big cats is one of my vets worked at the zoo and she worked with the big cats. I am so jealous..........lol.

I dont think the black panther they have up here has ever had any human contact,, when you walk by her cage she jumps at the fence and growls and shows you the nice HUGE set of teeth that she has, lol. Beautiful creature,,, I am just glad I dont have to ever deal with with her,,,, she does not seem very impressed, lol.

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I have sucker tattood on my forehead

There have compared the shoe print on the top of the railing and found it matched one of the kids. One of the survivors also admitted to standing on the railing and taunting the tiger. The kids were drunk and high, a half empty bottle of vodka and some weed was found in their possession/car. Although the kids were on top of the railing, they did not in anyway "assist" the tiger in escaping as originally suspected. The wall was simply too short. As mentioned, the reason the tiger wasn't tranqualized was because it wasn't zoo keepers who responded but police offices who had no other choice but to kill the tiger. If I recall, it took almost 15 minutes for someone to even respond because they thought it was a prank at first and it wasn't until a group of people were seen running and screaming about the tiger that they finally responded.

I've actually been very surprised how well some wild animals get along with humans. I read an article recently about a patch of jungle they've just discovered with dozens of species of animals that have been previously unknown. They've never had any contact with mankind ever - and they don't seem afraid or aggressive.

It's really a neat find, because that means that somewhere along the lines, these animals had to have had negative contact with humans and passed down (taught) some bit of it to their offspring to become so aggressive. The article I read was much more detailed, but, you know, I have a bad memory.

I mentioned that, because I've seen experienced humans interact with wild predators in ways I wouldn't have thought they could do. How we handle ourselves around these animals REALLY affects how they, in turn, handle themselves around us.

So here are my thoughts on the whole thing:

Is the Zoo responsible for this whole event? Definitely. They know they can't control dumb kids taunting the animals, so they need to make sure that the animal can't get out of the enclosure. More than that, they are responsible for knowing when the public life is stressing out their animals beyond what they can tolerate, and they need to give the poor thing a break. They need to have area where it can go to be alone, or where they can isolate it. Zoos are entertainment, but these are real lives that need to be tended to, and their well being should come first.

Does that absolve the boys of their abusive behavior? No! People are in a bad place right now. Very few people show compassion or empathy for others of any species. They are also not inclined to take responsibility for their actions. It's a world where no everyone passes the blame on to everyone else. After all the results of their actions shouldn't be *their* fault, right? These boys were more than old enough to understand that they should have respect for others. Even stupid teenagers can't just go around thinking that they can do whatever they want because their actions have no consequences. I know I did my fair share of Really Dumb Stuff as a teenager, but I also understood that I was responsible for what I did - which helped curb some of what I might have gotten into. I'm afraid the boys lying about not taunting the tigers is really showing that they expect to be able to foist it off again on to someone else's shoulders.

Are the police/paramedics/emergency services at fault? Yes, they are. There is no excuse for them to have taken so long in getting help to kids who are being eaten to death. The zoo, at least, should have trained security around to sedate the animals or shoot them, and the emergency staff should have taken the boy's call more seriously.

The real victim, in my opinion, is the poor tiger, simply reacting to captivity and the people there the way her instincts told her. She had no control, and it was sad that her life ended because of the mistakes of many.

I feel like all the people involved keep trying to pass the blame to someone else, while all of them had a part to play. I don't know if it's too much to hope for that people will look at a story like this and decide to adjust their own behavior to hopefully prevent something like this happening in the future, but I know I'm sure never going to taunt a tiger at a zoo!

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"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.

There are only so many police/paramedics/emergency services available to do everything that they have to do. Their resources and personel are limited and to expect them to be hanging around in close proximity in case an animal escapes from a zoo enclosure is not reasonable. This again is not really reasonable. There would be a couple of problems. Again there is a lack of personnel. Zoos have severly limited funds available to them. Can you imagine what it would cost you to even enter a Zoo that had to pay an army of trained guards to patrol the grounds. And for safety reasons they would have to be very well trained not to mention psychologically screened before they would be trusted roaming in a public area armed with firearms. This does not come cheap!
And for this scenario to be effective in a large area like this zoo, they would have to have enough of these armed guards situated near enough to every enclosure to be able to respond to prevent a tragedy like this from occurring. This is a public realtions nightmare. Would you wish to take your child to a zoo crawling with armed guards carrying firearms?
We can throw ideas, opinions, and blame around from now till whenever. But when it comes down to the bottom line; an institution or private individual who maintains animals that could potentially be a danger to the public are ultimately responsible to make certain that such accidents do not occur.
Sadly for all parties in this case the zoo failed in this responsibity.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. What I was talking about was a few trained people located in the parts of the zoo where it would be dangerous for one of the animals to escape. These people wouldn't be patrolling the park with guns, but they should have the means available to take down a large animal, and there should be a system where 911 operators can call them and let them know someone in the park is in distress.

I don't think that's too much to expect. They have security already, after all. A zoo should have some people working there that are trained to deal with these sorts of things, that could get to an area of the park in a timely manner.

I take back what I said about emergency services. I thought I remembered that the 911 dispatcher blew the boy who called off for half an hour before sending help, but I just went back and re-read the story, and it was actually the zoo's own security guard that did this. Whoops. This shows you how dangerous mis-information can be.

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"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.