Related News
Please do not cuddle the animals
Print Edition
UNLESS your name is Daniel and you’re a prophet of Biblical proportions, or at the bare minimum a highly trained zookeeper with a deferential disposition, chances are that if you wander into an enclosure occupied by a wild animal you’re going to get hurt.
There’s a strong possibility you will be seriously maimed and you might even be killed. At the very least you’ll receive a nasty scare and require fresh undergarments.
The reason for this is simple: wild animals are, as the name suggests, wild. They are not cuddly and cute, they are not playthings. They are untamed, undomesticated beasts, just as nature intended them to be.
Despite this glaringly obvious fact, there seems to be no shortage of misguided individuals who believe that the rules of the jungle (man-made or otherwise) do not apply to them.
Step forward “A Man Named Chen,” who last month scaled not only a 1.3-meter-high fence but also a 3-meter-deep ditch at Nanchang Zoo in east China’s Jiangxi Province to get up close and personal with a 120-kilogram giant panda called Mei Ling.
Luckily for the intruder, the 12-year-old bear was in a seemingly playful mood and instead of tearing Chen limb from limb after being rudely awoken with a patronizing pat on the head engaged him in an unchoreographed bout of no holds barred wrestling.
Footage of the encounter taken from a surveillance camera showed the fight was clearly a mismatch. Mei Ling made full use of his upper body strength and powerful jaws to drag Chen to the floor, and while it lasted only minutes, for the hapless human it must have felt like an eternity. What started as an act of bravado — Chen told officials he was trying to impress a couple of women with whom he’d gone to the zoo — might well have ended in tragedy.
That was certainly the case for a Chinese woman who was killed by tigers while on a visit to Badaling Wildlife World near Beijing.
The fatal incident happened after the woman tried to save her daughter who was mauled by one of the big cats after getting out of her car while still inside their enclosure. The younger woman’s husband, who also went to her aid but escaped uninjured, said later that the family thought they had already exited the danger zone.
In an interview published on the National Geographic’s website soon after the incident, wildlife biologist Luke Dollar warned of the risks people run when they come into close contact with untamed beasts.
“Lack of awareness and lack of respect for wild animals can sometimes be very expensive, and unfortunately it cost a woman her life,” he said.
Lions and tigers that live in captivity “often don’t have a healthy fear of people,” he said.
While there is no doubting the tragedy that befell the family at the Beijing safari park, it is all too often the animals that pay the price for the intrusions of humans into their domain.
In May, staff at a zoo in Chile shot dead two lions to save a man who had jumped into the big cats’ enclosure.
Security guards at the Metropolitan Zoo in the national capital of Santiago, fired the rounds that killed the beasts – one male and one female – as they mauled 20-year-old Franco Luis Ferrada Roman in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers.
“Due to the circumstances and to firstly protect the life of this person, we found ourselves obliged to apply all of our security protocols,” the zoo said in a statement published on its Facebook page.
Officials there took the “incomprehensible action” of killing two of its three lions, which was “profoundly painful for every single one of us.”
While it was initially reported that Roman had been trying to commit suicide, experts later suggested that based on information in letters he left behind, rather than attempting to end his life, he believed himself to be a divine “prophet” protected by Jesus Christ and wanted to perform a miracle.
Shanghai Daily was unable to find out if Roman survived his injuries, but there is no doubt that there was no salvation for the lions.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
