"Tragedy" -- or Farce?

Beautiful damn cat, though.

Quote :

Did the zoo staff do enough to deter ... him from rushing to his death?

Ya, they put a giant and lethal cat into the enclosure... How much more deterrent do you need?

Right on, Hecter. That would certainly be enough for me.

Well, that and a picture of Mitch McConnell.

Darwinism at work.

I know it may be a novel idea but we don't actually have to keep these animals in a zoo.
I mean, if you don't cage wild animals and then bring in the public to show them off this shit won't happen.
And fuck tranking the tiger. Why should the tiger's life be at risk to get some idiot out? Because he's mentally ill? Nope, don't think so.
Where are his people? If he's that suicidal, where are his people? Family? Doctors? Job? Someone knows that why isn't he in treatment? Oh that's right because we're all half assing everything now.

Unfortunately, Jenni, as much as it sickens me to see any animal caged up, if there were not zoos, I think we would have had a lot more species go extinct.

Maybe they should have a loud recording of the tiger's growl (more like a roar, actually) when someone gets too close to the enclosure. I can assure you that hearing that sound at night in the jungle will get your attention, so maybe it will work in the zoo. Holy shit, those things make a scary noise.

Zoos used to perform a valuable service, allowing patrons to see exotic species up close that they'd never see otherwise.

Then their mission began to mutate; now they are the chief bulwarks against extinction.

When the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle redid their elephant exhibit in the late 1980s, it was the first in the country to use a naturalistic environment. It won all sorts of awards and changed the future of zoo exhibits. The elephants -- previously confined in concrete cells with a glass wall for visitors -- are allowed to roam free over something like a half acre of natural woodland. They interact with each other and form bonds as they do in the wild. If a member of the herd is not getting along, they trade him or her to another zoo for a new elephant. One time they did this they got a tremendous reaction from one of the elephants. Turned out the two elephants had been together in the same zoo thirty years earlier. They recognized each other and greeted each other as old friends.

Animals in zoos are not necessarily miserable. If well treated and given a stimulating and comfortable environment they can lead quite a satisfying life. Rather like a house pet -- it may be "unnatural" but it beats starving to death in Africa or getting poached by ivory hunters or eaten by a lion.

Of course some animals take to captivity better than others. I don't think big cats are happy no matter how rich their environment.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I don't think big cats are happy no matter how rich their environment.

But they do enjoy the occasional snack.

_Howard wrote:

But they do enjoy the occasional snack.

Especially those zesty Indian ones - SPICY.

In New York, it's usually the polar bears who get to play with their food. Sadly, the police shot those two, and Prospect Park Zoo was redeveloped as more of a petting zoo, without the big animals.