Since the mauling of the three on Christmas day the San Fransisco has been trying to upgrade all of their enclosures.

That to me sounds good, but not having control over the animals in the enclosure, especially the dangerous ones, sounds a little scary. Wouldn’t it make more sense to shut down the zoo for the repairs, or completely block off certain parts? Safety of their customers should be the highest priority. Either way, the having a snow leopard almost escape its little cage and a polar bear having to be darted doesn’t sound safe to me.

A nearly 100-pound snow leopard managed to rip a 4-inch hole in its wire mesh cage Thursday afternoon and got part of its head and paw out, zoo officials said. The zookeeper could have been harmed if she had not secured the cage, but visitors were never threatened because the cage was in a larger, secured enclosure, zoo spokesman Sam Singer said.

Go read a bit more here.

In case some of you missed the tiger incident: Tatiana, Siberian Tiger escapes and mauls 3, killing one

Looks like everyone has to be more careful at zoos.

Siberian Tiger, Tatiana, from the famous San Fransisco Zoo escapes from her enclosure and mauls three, one dead at the scene and two in stable condition at the hospital.

The two injured men, ages 19 and 23, were upgraded to stable condition Wednesday at San Francisco General Hospital after surgery to clean and close their wounds, said surgeon Rochelle Dicker. They suffered deep bites and claw cuts on their heads, necks, arms and hands.

Dicker said they were shaken up emotionally and would remain hospitalized for the day, but that because of their youth they would make a full recovery.

Unfortunately, the San Francisco medical examiner cannot identify the dead man, no one has called to claim the victim and he had no identification on him at the time of the attack.

My question is, how did this animal get out of its enclosure? The 300-pound tiger escaped from the enclosure, which included a 15-foot-wide moat and 20-foot-high walls. The zoo’s director is saying that the cat did not leave through an open door either. So, the only options are to have swam the moat and climbed the wall, or completely skipped the swimming and climbing and just leaped out into the public.

Those ideas seem a little far-fetched to me, I personally cannot see a 300-pound lazy tiger leaping that distance or climbing for that matter. Moreover, if it climbed, there would be claw marks in the wall of the enclosure. The crime scene, as they call it, is being investigated still.

Read more .

Update:

The first attack happened right outside the tiger’s enclosure — Sousa died at the scene. Another was about 300 yards away, in front of the zoo cafe. The police chief said the animal was mauling one of the survivors, and when officers yelled at it to stop, it turned toward them and they opened fire.

Only then did they see the third victim, police said.

The two injured men, 19- and 23-year-old brothers from San Jose, were in stable condition Wednesday at San Francisco General Hospital. They suffered deep bites and claw wounds on their heads, necks, arms and hands, said Dr. Rochelle Dicker, a surgeon. She said they were expected to recover fully.

Also, I was interested in this:

One zoo official insisted the tiger did not get out through an open door and must have climbed or leaped out. But Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo, said such a leap would be an unbelievable feat and “virtually impossible.”

Instead, he speculated that visitors could have been fooling around and might have taunted the animal and perhaps even helped it get out by, say, putting a board in the moat.

Update Jan 2, 2008
More on Tatiana’s wild adventure in the San Fran Zoo:

According to police dispatch logs from the day of the attack, someone inside the cafe called 911 at 5:07 p.m. It is unclear when the brothers tried to notify people in the cafe about the attack.

The dispatch logs also show that zoo employees initially questioned whether early reports of the attack were coming from a mentally unstable person.

By 5:10 p.m. zoo employees reported that a tiger was loose, and by 5:13 p.m., the zoo was being evacuated and locked down.

For several minutes, the medics refused to enter the zoo until it had been secured. Meanwhile, zookeepers believed several tigers were loose, and hoped to tranquilize them.

“Zoo personnel have the tiger in sight and are dealing with it,” reads a 5:17 p.m. note on the transcript.

By 5:20 p.m., medics had located one victim — presumably Sousa — with a large puncture wound to his neck. The tiger was still loose.

As medics attended to the victim, an officer spotted the tiger sitting down before it fled and began attacking another victim, according to the logs.

At 5:27 p.m., less than 20 minutes after the initial reports, the officers killed the tiger.

Zoo officials say the tiger likely climbed over the wall of its enclosure, which was about 4 feet below the recommended minimum for U.S. zoos.

Wow, read that? Zoo in trouble now…