Word: tigers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That tiger could have been surrounded by 10,000 people," says Dave Salmoni, the Animal Planet network's predator expert, who spent years training big cats; but if the animal has a mission, "it will avoid all of those people and just to go to those three people." Says Salmoni, "There's nothing more focused than a tiger who wants to kill something." The thing is, though, it's not easy to prompt such enmity: "To get a tiger to want to fight you is pretty hard," says Salmoni. "Tigers don't like to fight. They hunt to kill...
Citing Tatiana's so-called history of violence - her assault just over a year ago on a zookeeper during a feeding - Salmoni says, "It may hold what we call a grudge on people." Tatiana wasn't put down then because the zoo director had determined that the tiger was acting as a normal tiger does...
...violently before. In 2006 an orca (a.k.a. killer whale) at SeaWorld in San Diego attacked its trainer, who survived. That summer an elephant killed its handler at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. In 2004 a gorilla at the Dallas Zoo went on a rampage, injuring four people. A white tiger critically hurt illusionist Roy Horn, half of the performing duo Siegfried & Roy, at the Mirage Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas in 2003. More recently, in February 2007, a jaguar at the Denver Zoo killed a keeper. Despite these, among other dramatic attacks, some people wonder why they don't happen...
Tatiana, a zoo tiger, was not acting under "natural" conditions, Bradshaw points out, and the animal's physical and social limitations ought to be taken into account when examining her violent behavior. This is not to say the tiger might not have attacked had she been in the wild, but Bradshaw says her history of captivity can't be ignored. Like the elephants in Africa, she might have been striking back...
...science of animal sentience is far from a firm one; there's no way of knowing exactly what any animal is feeling. But it's conceivable that something in Tatiana's life, beyond her instinct, could have impelled her to attack. She may have been simply behaving like a tiger - but, perhaps, behaving like a tiger is not so psychologically distinct from behaving like a human...