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Tiger Attack Forces New Look At Walls

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By ADAM GOLDMAN, The Associated Press

Published: January 12, 2008

Updated: 01/11/2008 05:44 pm

A tiger lurked in the tall grass at a park in India as gamekeepers tried to shoot it with a dart gun and missed. The animal suddenly sprang from the grass, sailed through the air and took a swipe at a man sitting on an elephant's back.

The man lost three fingers.

"I could never imagine that a tiger could so effortlessly leap from the ground on to an adult elephant's head, which is at least 12 feet above the ground," Vivek Menon, executive director of Wildlife Trust of India, said of the 2004 attack, a video of which has been on YouTube.

That attack, along with other examples of explosive encounters with tigers, are stoking a debate that began after a 350-pound Siberian tiger climbed over the 12 1/2 - foot wall around its pen at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas and mauled three visitors, killing one.

Among the questions experts are now asking: How high can tigers jump? And have zoos and sanctuaries dangerously underestimated tigers?

That is to say: Are the walls high enough?

"We are evaluating that right now," said Vernon Weir, director of the American Sanctuary Association, which has about 35 members, only a few of which have big cats. The ASA accredits sanctuaries and in the past recommended 12-foot fences.

Similarly, Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which accredits the nation's zoos, may adjust its 16.4-foot wall-height recommendation for tigers once it learns fully what happened in San Francisco, spokesman Steve Feldman said.

In San Francisco, the wall was well below the AZA minimum. Several other major U.S. zoos appear to meet or exceed the standards, with high walls topped in many cases with electrified wire or pronounced overhangs to prevent tigers from pulling themselves up and over the side.
Animal experts said they aren't aware of any hard numbers about the precise leaping ability of tigers. They said it depends on the animal and whether it has been taunted, as may have happened in the San Francisco attack. Feldman said his organization's 16.4-foot figure was based on the opinions of a group of experts.

In an incident at a national park in Nepal in 1974, an enraged Bengal tiger protecting her cubs mauled a researcher who had climbed into a tree. The tiger climbed onto a 15-foot-high limb.

"She just went right up and she didn't have much to hold on to. She clearly made that jump without much problem," said Melvin Sunquist, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida and an expert on tigers.

Sunquist, who published an account of the Nepal attack in his book "Tiger Moon: Tracking the Great Cats of Nepal," said he wasn't surprised by the news that a tiger had gotten out of its cage in San Francisco.

"I saw what a tigress can do," he said. "If they can get a purchase on anything, they can get up there."

The AZA said it has 216 accredited members with 258 tigers among them. Only five of them were born in the wild, and tigers in captivity generally cannot jump as high as those that are in top condition from hunting in the wild.

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