Yes, I always support the tiger and blame the people. I always feel sorry for the tiger. When the tiger is shot I always feel very sad and upset. I don’t have much in the way of thoughts about the person who might have been injured or killed. I have sympathy for the injured people but my true sympathies and feelings are for the tiger. I don’t consider myself some sort of crazy animal activist (they are never crazy, by the way). I just like animals and want them to get a fair deal and be treated with respect.
Here is an example of why I feel like this…
TATIANA – a Siberian tiger
This is the story as I read it from Wikipedia. The facts of what happened are not clear so what follows is not completely factual but what might or possibly did happened.
Three young men drive up to the San Francisco Zoo. They have been drinking a bit and taking cannabis. Their names were Carlos Eduardo Sousa Jr., and brothers, Amritpal “Paul” and Kulbir Dhaliwal.
It is believed that these men wanted to lark around and taunted Tatiana who was in her concrete bunker (“grotto”). Her home was surrounded by a concrete wall almost 13 feet high. It is thought that the men used slingshots to attack Tatiana. It appears to have been highly provocative behavior. All of this is denied through their lawyer.
Well, Tatiana climbed her concrete wall! Yes, chips of concrete were found in her paws. She got out of a place that was meant to imprison her. The motivation to get out was, it seems, to attack those who allegedly attacked and taunted her.
Tatiana got to Carlos quickly and killed him with bites to the head and neck that fractured bones and a cut jugular vein. The brothers ran to a café, leaving a trial of blood. They were chased by Tatiana. They had been severely injured with deep scratches and bites. A zoo employee called 911.
The police took a while to get there partly because the zoo was locked down. There was chaos. The marksmen waited until Tatiana was sufficiently distanced from one of the brothers. The tiger was distracted, turned to face the police and the zoo staff and was shot through the forehead. I presume she was shot elsewhere too.
Tigers are amazingly tough and several bullets are often needed to kill them. She was cut up (and her paws cut off) and an autopsy (for animals it is called a “necropsy“) carried out. There was no human flesh in her stomach.
I hate the idea of cutting her paws off and cutting her up. Why? It is just seems unnecessarily brutal to me and compounds the whole sorry human mess.
I predict that one day there will be no tigers in the wild unless the tigers of Bhutan ensure their survival. Once they are extinct in the wild they will become extinct in zoos due to inbreeding causing sterility. The gene pool of zoo cats is limited.
The whole disaster is man made, humans created the chaos from beginning to the end. The beginning was putting a tiger in a concrete “grotto” when in the wild they have ranges that are massive. This is cruel.
The zoo enclosure was not safe, apparently. The wall should have been taller. It should have been over 16 feet tall, which tells you how bloody amazing tigers are, how athletic they are and how they should be allowed to express those skills in the wild.
For a tiger to jump and climb a concrete wall almost 13 feet tall shows us how desperate she was to get out. At least the bloody zoo let her keep her claws. A lot places have tigers declawed which damn near cripples them sometimes.
If a person cares about treating animals fairly and decently I believe that person is bound to come down on the side of the tiger under these circumstances.
There are other instances of tigers attacking zoo staff at zoos in their cage. The tiger can never be blamed. When you think about it, all the blame must be with the people. People put the tiger in the cage. People walk into the cage and fail to ensure the tiger could not get into the cage they are in etc. etc.
Humans create the conditions under which they are attacked by tigers.
Tigers should not be shot with bullets but with tranquillizers. When it comes to zoo tiger attacks, I am for the tiger everytime.
Note: Caroline, a PoCer asked me to write about Tatiana. I have and it hurts as usual.
“Pre-meditated,” mind you. Those sonsofagun were looking for “entertainment” in their drug-addled state. The police a lot more than just marijuana. No feeble excuses, Michael, for these fools.
You sed “bloody” to describe the SF zoo, not reserved for the stupid, hateful, entertainment-seeking-at Tatiana’s-expense, assholes? They are the major culprits here.
Marc, if I had been there (I’m certain that you would have too) at closing time, at the time that this occurred, I would -with my 125lb. body, tried to take on all three of them, to distract them from hurting her. !!! grrr…
I just don’t know how to judge any longer, Michael, on a case by case basis, given all of the facts (which does not happen 99% of the time, as you well know better than most of us). But I will agree with you that in the case of big cats, they should not be held in zoos. There has got to be a better way to educate. Obiviously, some people use the zoos as a means of entertaining their own stupidity a nd animosity. sigh… I hate them.
I fully agree with you, Michael. And thank you for placing Tatiana on your site. Our site. 🙂
I will be editing the Wikipedia page again. It is too often edited in favor of the stupid, mean young men who did this to her. sigh. We all need to reresearch this, and put it on the page.
Ruth, you can bet that those keepers of the big cats at the SF Zoo are making sure that they are on hyper-alert now, at closing time. (That is when the stupid, drug-addled -not just marijuana, mind you- were doing their pre-meditated harassing.)