tiger outrage
Ok, I’ve heard all I can listen to about this without saying something. Two days ago, a tiger escaped from it’s enclosure inthe San Francisco Zoo, killing one man and mauling two others before being killed by officers responding to reports of an escaped tiger. That someone was killed, or even injured, is completely regrettable, What is absolutely intolerable and pisses me off is the killing of the tiger.
While the post mortem continues about how the tiger got out of the enclosure, what no one is really asking is WHY? I keep hearing about how shy and afraid these tigers are, and no one knows why it did it, but I do. In fact, the answer is so simple I can’t believe no one has thought of it yet. What happens when you back a scared animal into a corner? If it doesn’t lie down and play dead until you go away, it becomes fierce and attacks. I mean, DUH! That’s basic animal behavior. In the tiger, you have a creature that is used to roaming over hundreds of square miles by itself, then you restrict it to a small enclosure compared to its natural habitat, then expect it to calmly accept the presence of a huge number of people that it fears. Is it really so unreasonable to expect it to stop fearing and turn aggressive and try to escape back to its natural environment?
To make matters worse, why was it killed? I mean, let’s think about this: lots of large dangerous animals within a relatively close proximity to each other - are you really going to tell me the zoo doesn’t have a tranquilizer gun or several in the event an unruly animal needs to be controlled, or otherwise handled? My first thought when I heard the story, other than I hoped the two guys were ok, was they did just tranquilize the tiger, right? WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING? Large dangerous animal walking around the park - what the hell do we need tranquilizers for? We’ll just kill it. Why wasn’t getting a tranquilizer gun they’re first reaction?
And herein lies my problem with zoos. We take animals out of their natural environment and say it’s for their ‘protection’, for the preservation of the species - but when we do the same thing to humans, we call it prison and it’s ‘punishment’. Which is it?
Why did no one in the San Francisco Zoo think to get a tranquilizer gun to take the tiger down? These are the people charged with the care of these animals, the supposed ‘experts’, and yet my instincts seem to operate better than everyone at that zoo. WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE - you have a much larger responsibility than you realize, their lives are now in your hands, and I’d hate to have your karma right about now.