EASTERN GERMANY – NEWS AND COMMENT: An erotic model has been scarred for life after a captive leopard at a retirement home for show animals attacked her. She was inside the leopard’s enclosure at the time doing a photoshoot. At one stage the authorities thought that the leopard had escaped but that was not the case. She was led into the enclosure by the owner Brigit Stache an animal trainer FOR circuses and amusement parks. It seems possible that the owner will now lose her leopards and they may even be euthanized. An investigation is taking place.
It’s also possible that Stache might be prosecuted for ‘negligent bodily harm’ – acting negligently in placing the model at risk of an attack by a leopard.
The model’s name is Jessica Leidolph, 36. She works as an animal rights activist. After the attack she was airlifted to a specialist clinic by helicopter. The leopard’s name is Troja. As I understand it, he’s an old leopard (16-years-old). He lives in the enclosure with another elderly leopard called Paris who is 18 years old. They have featured in an advert for Panasonic.
Their enclosure is more than 9000 ft². It is located at Nebra in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Leidolph said after the surgery that the leopard “repeatedly kept biting my cheek, ear and head.”
A spokesperson for the local authorities said that keeping leopards does not require a permit in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. It appears that the keeping of leopards in that region of Germany “is not legally limited by the state”.
Comment: I am sure that the attack was a great surprise and shock to the owner of the facility. Otherwise, she would not have let the model in the enclosure with the leopards. It goes to show that you can never domesticate fully a wild cat. An ostensibly ‘domesticated’ or tamed wild cat like a leopard is not the same as a domestic cat in terms of temperament and behaviour (obvious?). Although it has to be said that the domestic cat is barely domesticated and they not infrequently attack people they know because they play with them and in doing so, they deliver a scratch or bite. It is just that the leopard is so much larger.
Source: Various news media outlets including Sky News.
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