I am currently unavailable for comment due to the holidays but thought you might want to see some photos and comments on the recent tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo Lion House.

A tiger attack on a zoo keeper at the San Francisco Zoo occurred in the historic lion house. A flash back to the past, this zoo continues an old exhibition tradition surrounding the feeding of the big cats.

Sometime back on a visit to the San Francisco Zoo I was called upon to take a look at Tony the tiger (for stereotypic behavior) and was invited to witness the behavior during feeding time. Staff on hand maintained an old circus like showmanship approach to the feeding and crowds clammered to get a look a the fierce beasts.

If you take a look at the photos here you can see that a cat could get his or her paws out of the enclosure and grab someone standing within range. Big cats exhibit fierce possessive behavior during feeding time sometimes grabbing at anything within range.

These are close ups and more photos of the San Francisco Lion House can be accessed here.

San Francisco Lion House

A few of the incident articles:
KCBS Reports Tiger Attack at San Francisco Zoo Lion House

CBS Report: Tiger Attack

San Francisco Zoo Tiger Attack

Beastly Behavior: Animal Attacks

Actually, most wild animals that are predators or carnivores attack as part of their wild nature. The same holds true for protective attacks from species considered “docile” by most people, such as deer. Deer actually attack tons of people every year. USA Today printed this article, Deer Attacks: Civilization Locks Horns with Nature.

Find the Bureau of Labor Statistics Chart of Animal Attack Fatalities here or search for the latest data once on the site. (The new data does not seem to have been pulled out but animal attack fatality summaries through 2002 is listed in this PDF under “Assaults and violent acts” (page 4) and (page 12) Under “Persons, plants, animals, and minerals.”

What the media missed in their stories surrounding why animals attack is that recent research has found that captive animals also suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.

During my career, and highlighted in my last assignment with elephants, I theorized that animals with unstable backgrounds, inconsistency in handling, and other similar contributing factors were more inclined to be fearful or aggressive. Recent research is now correlating that theory.

Elephant research has attributed instability to something akin to post traumatic stress syndrome as discussed by Charles Seibert in his article that appeared in the New York Times titled, An Elephant Crackup? (http://www.arkanimals.com will publish in an article in January related to this topic.)

Although more and more wild animals are being born in captivity and do not fall into this category, there are still many wild caught animals who witnessed the slaughter of their kin and who may have been traumatized by other such human activities.

Obviously, the answers are not so simple and determining just what the cause was for the attack on Ken Peters, the orca trainer has not been identified. Minor altercations with both wild and domestic animals occur regularly and trainers must always be in top form physically and mentally to deal with wild animal charges.

This topic might be a good idea for a scientific rather than a sensationalized special.

Okay, last night a killer whale kept a trainer submerged during a training session. The orca apparrently grabbed the foot of the man and kept him under. Although you don’t hear too much about captive orca attacks, they do occur. This is another orca attack at Sea World

Why do captive orcas attack? Everyone speculates but nobody really knows. I’ve seen an orca get pissed off at the trainers and come onto the stage after them. Sometimes it is frustration–maybe the cue for the behavior was off or the reinforcement was not what the animal anticipated, perhaps it is hormonal, or an attempt to attract attention.

Ultimately, when you are working with wild animals you are taking risks. Animals might be amiable to humans but they are also true to their wild nature. People tend to forget thatand want to think of these majestic creatures akin to pals. Even pets bite and scratch but most people don’t want to take a closer look at dog bites and other altercations…still at epidemic levels.

My personal negative dolphin tank experience in a foreign county was due to trainer error (of the park employees). I told the assistant trainer to pull me out when I sensed and experienced low level aggression. Luckily, I didn’t get pushed under and we did figure why the altercation occurred which is something I talk about in my training courses.

Many years later, emergency protocols are poor in many establishments. Just how to you handle a out-of-control orca? Tough challenge to address in an aquatic environment and with the size and strength of an orca…did the trainer have an air tank on?

Questions you might ask park officials:
-How has incident mitigation evolved or changed over the past 10-20 years?
-What incident protocols now exist to mitigate attacks and incidents?
-Did previous incidents within the past month not indicate an escalating problem?
-What safety training do trainers get for such incidents?

More Articles on this orca incident and related tangents:
Whale Attack

Shamu at Sea World (actually the attacking whale’s real name was the dominant female Kasaka)

Kasaka had smaller previous “unwanted behaviors”

In fact, this article states that a similar aggressive orce incident occurred 2-3 weeks previously.


Frontline produced a program called, “A Whale of a Business” and looked into the captive whale issue. You can read pros and cons at this site.

This hobbyiest site includes some orca attacks.

I worked at Marineland when a female trainer was held down until she was unconscious. Not all orca incidents make it to public lists. This old orca attack video looks like it was done at the old Marineland facility. The woman is not a trainer but an employee of the park.

If you are interested in a nostalgia, here is the historic website for Marineland (still under construction). Behind the scenes the orcas would often follow employees as they walked around the tank.

Finally, this odd site has been collecting animal attack incidents for years.