Posted on 12/28/2007 11:16:15 AM PST by RDTF
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The last minutes of a 17-year-old boy's life were spent trying to save his friend from a brutal tiger mauling at the San Francisco Zoo, only to have the animal turn on him, police and family members said.
Carlos Sousa Jr. and his friend's brother desperately tried to distract the 350-pound Siberian tiger, but the big cat instead came after Sousa.
"He didn't run. He tried to help his friend, and it was him who ended up getting it the worst," the teen's father, Carlos Sousa Sr., said Thursday after meeting with police.
The heroic portrait of Sousa and a timeline of the dramatic Christmas Day attack emerged as officials revealed that the tiger's escape from its enclosure may have been aided by walls that were well below the height recommended by the accrediting agency for the nation's zoos.
San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo acknowledged that the wall around the animal's pen was just 12½ feet high, after previously saying it was 18 feet. According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the walls around a tiger exhibit should be at least 16.4 feet high. Watch why Sousa Sr. believes the zoo could have done more to protect patrons »
Mollinedo said it was becoming increasingly clear the tiger leaped or climbed out, perhaps by grabbing onto a ledge. Investigators have ruled out the theory the tiger escaped through a door behind the exhibit.
"She had to have jumped," he said. "How she was able to jump that high is amazing to me."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Luckily, Police Chief ‘Heather’ still allowed her cops to HAVE guns.
From what I have read, these kids were taunting the tiger.
Guess they did not understand the saying “Mess with the bull, you get the horn”.
.....Bob
So true. I guess they should be able to tell which one’s shoe print they found on the railing. And conflicting reports of a shoe found in the moat.
Funny how the only people injured by this now dead tiger all knew each other. Others in the vicinity were bypassed by the mad tiger.
Not all people are smarter than all animals.
ML/NJ
All the little domestic cats I’ve ever known could leap from the floor to a kitchen counter with the greatest of ease. Scale that up, and a 12.5 ft. wall doesn’t sound like much of an obstacle to a tiger.
“The heroic portrait of Sousa “
I am withholding my opinion of “Hero” for this guy. Brave, yes, but a real hero would not have allowed his friends to get into this position.
Darwin has to come into this eventually.
....Bob
“All the little domestic cats I’ve ever known could leap from the floor to a kitchen counter with the greatest of ease. Scale that up, and a 12.5 ft. wall doesn’t sound like much of an obstacle to a tiger.”
Experts on Fox this AM were amazed that the tiger did it, but they did say, with enough taunting, and adrenaline in the cat, it was possible.
Not sure you can scale a house kitty up to a 350 lb tiger. If a 1 pound house cat can jump 1 foot, then to scale, a 350 pound tiger can jump 350 feet.
.....Bob
Maybe scale it up by size not weight. A one foot long housecat can jump four times his length; A four foot long tiger would jump sixteen feet -- over the twelve foot SF Zoo fence.
It’s comming out now that at least two of them had criminal records...
No matter how the tiger got there, I’d say The Marines missed getting another Sousa in their ranks.
Well, I knew that the tiger had a criminal record. She attacked one of her keepers in October last year. /feeble attempt at a joke.
.....Bob
I still say the three of them went to the zoo intending to harass the tiger as part of some kind of “extreme stunt”. I bet it’s been done there before and I bet other kids in the area know about it.
The inverse cube law becomes relevant when you scale a cat from ten pounds to 350.
I find it amazing that the tiger was able to identify the other two, over 300yds away, and make a meal out of them.
If an animal were scaled up by a considerable amount, its muscular strength would be severely reduced since the cross section of its muscles would increase by the square of the scaling factor while their mass would increase by the cube of the scaling factor. As a result of this, cardiovascular functions would be severely limited.In the case of flying animals, their wing loading would be increased if they were scaled up, and they would therefore have to fly faster to gain the same amount of lift. This would be difficult considering that muscular strength was reduced. This also explains how a bumblebee can have a large body relative to its wings, which would not be possible for a larger flying animal. Air resistance per unit mass is also higher for smaller animals, which is why a small animal like an ant cannot die by falling from any height, but a tank could no more survive a fall from a height of one mile than an elephant could.
Because of this, the giant insects, spiders and other animals seen in horror movies are unrealistic, as their sheer size would force them to collapse. The exceptions are giant aquatic animals, as water can support such enlarged creatures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law
Does it really matter if the tiger was “taunted”? I would think that the Zoo has a responsibility to protect the viewing public in every circumstance. What if the Taunter was retarded and could not understand the danger of his own actions? I believe the Management and designers of the Zoo are liable in every instance and I believe the legal proceedings that are inevitably forthcoming will bare that out.
I am probably wrong, but here is a possible scenario:
The 3 kids see the tiger getting over the fence, so they start to run. The tiger catches up with them 300 yards away, and mauls 2 of them while the third (hero) runs away. The tiger then goes after the 3rd kid.
I realize I am speculating here.
....Bob
My kitty, Phoebe the Pherocious, could jump the almost 5 feet from my livingroom table to the top of the valance on the curtains covering the large bay window I had. For the protection of my furniture, and me, she was declawed. It’s not hard for me to imagine that the tiger could jump a 20-foot moat and a 12-1/2 foot fence.
One of the boys was bleeding. The tiger trailed the blood.
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