Graphic Video: Man killed by tiger bite to head and neck trying to avoid zoo entrance charge
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO.
This was a New Year family outing to a zoo that went horribly wrong and the reason was a bizarre decision by the head of the family, Mr Zhang, to try and avoid the zoo’s entrance fee by climbing over two ten foot high walls which landed him in the tiger enclose where he was faced with four tigers one of which bit his head and neck in a typical prey attack bite. He was pronounced dead in hospital later. I suspect that he was dead before then.
What is particularly strange is that he paid the entrance fee for his family. Ticket prices are £15 for adults and £8 for children at the Ningho Youngor Zoo in Zhejiang Province, Eastern China. These charges seem high when compared to the average salary in China.
He actually scaled the two fences with a friend but the friend did not jump down into the tiger enclosure. Mr Zhang ignored warning signs before clambering over the inner wall which I presume is the tiger enclosure wall.
Zoo tiger attack. Mr Zhang still alive.
One tiger clamped down on Mr Zhang’s neck and head as he kicked away another. Zoo staff scared away three of the tigers by throwing firecrackers and using water cannon but the first tiger would not release him from its bite and dragged him deeper into enclosure. This tiger was shot dead by police. Very sad. And of course sadness for Mr Zhang and his family.
Visitors to the zoo and his family had watched the whole thing. Some videoed it. There were screams and the video is very hard, if not impossible, to watch. Most commentators sympathised more with the shot tiger than Mr Zhang.
Note: I have not watched the video fully, just the first seconds. Therefore I am unable to compare the video with the description on this page. The source is The Times newspaper.
The kill bite is pure instinct in big cats. I watched it. This is why it should be illegal for anyone to privately own big cats, bears etc. I feel sorry for his family.
I’m only more convinced that people (generally) are stupid and careless when it comes to wildlife, and both end up losing. I’m not a zoologist or animal behaviorist, but a novel thought is that tigers could be trained (or conditioned) to not think of people as prey or toys, and if trainers walked among them frequently, they wouldn’t be curious to “play” with them. I liken it to conditioning one’s cat to not think of your hand or body as a plaything, that it’s for petting and licking, not biting.
Why train them not to attack people, they’re not meant to be prisoners & shouldn’t be in zoo enclosures in the first place!
Thanks Bev for sharing your views.
You can’t train that our of them. The kill bite is built in. Zoos take great pains to make sure keepers are never in contact with big cats. We have heard the stories of what happens when the fail safes and protocols are not followed.