Woman killed by wolves in swedish zoo.

[ingsve]

I thought this story might interest Hrakkar who works wild animals as well.

http://www.thelocal.se/41496/20120617/

Have you had any incidents like this with any of the animals you work with Hrakkar?

[Hrakkar]

There is undoubtedly more to this story than meets the eye. Wolves are generally not aggressive to people unless there is some sort of extenuating circumstances. I suspect that a cause for this incident will be identified. Unfortunately for the wolves, it will mean less contact with the keepers, which is part of the socialization needed to keep these animals happy and healthy in captivity.

Although incidents with wolves are rare, zookeeper incidents with cats are the number one cause of human deaths here in the US. Zoos, especially the large ones, have be responsible for like 4 out of the last 5 big cat caused deaths here in the US. Circuses and magic shows are a distant second, and the so-called 'pet owners' have the best safety record overall. This is based on statistics originally collected by animal right groups here in the US. When carefully analyzed, they showed that they were lying about where the real safety problems are (and that the problem is a very small problem compared to all the other ways you can die). The animal rights folks have since pulled these statistics from their sites, and we now keep them up to date.

We do not go in with our cats, and have caging that is up to current safety standards. So, we have not had any incidents or escapes.

[ingsve]

One thing they said is that it's a problem to socialize with wilves since that means they treat you as part of the pack and they can be pretty nasty to each other in the pack.

[Hrakkar]

One thing they said is that it's a problem to socialize with wilves since that means they treat you as part of the pack and they can be pretty nasty to each other in the pack.

From what I have studied about wolves (many years ago, I was seriously into wolves before I got into cats), and from what I have seen from having been around wolves and high content wolfdogs, the social aspect is not a real hard thing to deal with. Something went seriously wrong here.

A related article indicated it had been well over a hundred years in Sweden since a captive wolf killed a human.

[ingsve]

Man apparently killed by tigers in danish zoo.

http://cphpost.dk/news/national/man-killed-tigers-zoo

The story is still being updated as this is posted.

Edit: Here is an updated part of the story: http://cphpost.dk/news/local/police-zoo-not-fault-mans-death

An interesting side note in the second story about someone who in 2009 committed suicide by entering a tiger enclosure in a different Zoo. Suicide is of course tragic but that's a unique way to do it at least.

[Hrakkar]

There is an incident like this every two or three years, somewhere in the world. As often as not, the cats will leave the intruder alone as long as they don't do anything to threaten the cats.

Zoo cats in zoos that don't socialize their cats with people are far more likely to kill (and eat, if they recognize the body as food, a problem in these kinds of zoos) than zoos that socialize their cats. This is why the safety record of large zos tends to be rather poor compared to other classes of big cat owners. They don't socialize their cats to make them 'behave wild' (which IMHO doesn't work well, because captive cats do not 'behave wild').