After the tiger attack, zoos will still exist unfortunately for real animal lovers and those concerned in keeping wild animals where they normally belong, in their own habitat. That is due to several reasons. Even though we are no longer living in times where big game hunts were more common and linked to getting recognition in certain hunting clubs among the top brass, we have an attitude that has changed little since that time.
Large game animals were hunted, their heads were stuffed and mounted and their skins became rugs. That went along with the notion that they could also be kept in large caged enclosures for our amusement. Anybody who says that the zoo is around to educate forgets about the foundation it was originally created for an education is a poor excuse.
Today much about what the student needs can be obtained off the Internet and if he does not have access than libraries still exist. Now that the institution has been around for a few hundred years, how is it going to be dismantled? That is the second issue.
As far as the death that occurred, it looks like the wall around the moat was lower than required even though the zoo is an accredited member of a national zoo association. Maybe the zoo has a reputable standing, but it takes only one event like this which plants a seed in the mind of visitors who question the safety of current enclosures around dangerous animals everywhere where there is human presence.
The issue if safety should not be trivialized even though deaths occurring at zoos are infrequent. Once the cause of death is established, and in the case of the last fatality, the insufficient height of the enclosure was suggested, then that should be remedied. I would not put up with rhetoric on whether it is high enough or not, as was suggested in the media. Banter over its height will not solve further escapes based on common knowledge that large cats have been known to scale high walls.
The zoo authorities should have already dealt with this cat that had already attacked a zoo keeper. That may have involved not keeping it out in the open where it would have jumped and I am not suggesting the animal should have been killed. There is already a shortage of tigers in the wild and our goal is to preserve the specie not to bring about its destruction. Our goal is not to induce depression either as is often seen in certain mammals kept behind bars.
Tigers are meant to be aggressive, attacking is what they do in the wild and they are not in zoos to be cuddled or domesticated.
An alternative would have been to return the cat the wild, if the zoo was not going to increase security. I know all this means money but if increased security means the zoo has to spend funds it does not have, then it should give up on containing animals that would do better in their own natural habitats. Some say that would rob us of the possibility of seeing these animals up close but that is not seeing the animal as they should be seen. There are no bars in nature.
This argument can be extended to less attractive animals, ones that are less cuddly like a hyena or an emu, which is also kept in a cage or enclosure. The open concept has caught on for some zoos, which get certain animals to roam in larger spaces. They are not as restricted as when they are in cages but that would not solve a possible attack like the recent one in San Francisco.
