Today the newspaper reported that the wall is only 12 feet tall, not 18 (!) .
Duh.
Charles
>>> Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/27/2007 1:06 PM >>>
Until the assassination of Benazir Bhutto occurred, the cable news
networks were consumed with the news of a tiger escaping from its cage
in the San Francisco zoo and killing one man and wounding two others.
Today’s NY Times reported:
Now considered a crime scene, the San Francisco Zoo was closed to
visitors on Wednesday as police investigators swept the grounds
searching for evidence to explain how a Siberian tiger escaped its
open-air grotto on Tuesday, killing one young man and seriously injuring
two others.
Investigators are seeking witnesses and intend to interview the
survivors, two brothers ages 19 and 23, who were in shock but in stable
condition after surgery to clean wounds from “deep claw and tooth
attacks,” said a doctor at a news conference at San Francisco General
Hospital. The identity of the brothers has not been released.
The tiger, a 300-pound female Siberian named Tatiana who attacked a
zookeeper last December, was shot to death by the police after the zoo’s
5 p.m. closing on Tuesday, after it somehow jumped barriers around the
Lion House habitat and killed Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, of San Jose.
The police said they were trying to determine whether the tiger
escaped because of negligence or equipment failure or whether it was
somehow provoked to jump the 18-foot wall around the grotto.
So far commentators are quite worked up over the question of a tiger
jumping 18 feet into the air, since that would tend to render zoos
around the country as possible breeding grounds for repeat terrorist
attacks by suicide felines. Just picture a pissed-off tiger jumping over
the head of a full-grown giraffe and you get a sense of the worries felt
among zoo management circles. It must be equal to what the CIA felt
after 9/11.
The NY Times refers to a “Lion House Habitat,” but how in the world
could a zoo replicate the real habitat of a tiger? According to
http://www.bigcatrescue.org:
Indian tigers generally have a range of 8-60 square miles, based on
availability of prey. Sumatran tigers have a range of about 150 square
miles. Due to the severity of the climate and lack of prey, the Siberian
tiger can require a range of 400 square miles. Tigers have lost more
than 40% of their habitat in the past decade.
With the loss of habitat, you will naturally see a decline of this
species–a fate that all animals at the top of the food chain are now
facing with the large-scale “development” taking place in rain forests
everywhere. Indeed, there are more tigers in captivity today than there
are in the wild.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/12/27/escaped-tigers/
