As this nutter found out at a Zoo in Belgium:
Cheetahs Maul Woman to Death At Belgium Zoo
BRUSSELS, Belgium — An animal lover was mauled to death by cheetahs after entering their cage at a zoo in northern Belgium, authorities and zoo officials said Monday.
Karen Aerts, 37, of Antwerp, was found dead in the cage, Olmense Zoo spokesman Jan Libot said. Police said they ruled out any foul play.
Authorities believe Aerts, a regular visitor to the zoo, hid in the park late Sunday until it closed and managed to find the keys to the cheetah cage.
Karen loved animals. Unfortunately the cheetahs betrayed her trust,” Libot said. (italics added)
The cheetahs betrayed her trust?
Cheetahs are incapable of trust. They are not human – not even domesticated – and if they betrayed anything they betrayed the cold hearted fact that the spokesman at the Olmense Zoo is just as goofy as the Darwin Award who snuck into their cage.
I hate zoos – and always have. Zoos are guilty of “legalized poaching,” and have historically looked the other way when they needed a particular animal for their “collection.” I don’t even buy the line that they are necessary for education any more. That’s what the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet are for. Breeding programs? When the goal is re-introduction into the wild then perhaps, but then they aren’t zoos anymore – they are wildlife conservation programs.
I was a research assistant for wild chimps at a national park in Tanzania. Once I was stupid enough to travel alone in the forest to take some pictures, and found myself facing a female leopard on the trail. She growled at me, and the sound activated some deep primal knowledge that overroad everything, such as the idea to raise the camera to snap her picture(fatal error) or another to run away (another fatal error). Instead I slowly backed off until I was well out of sight from her (and downwind) then ran like hell back to camp.
Had I died on that trail, there wouldn’t have been any “betrayal of trust”, just the betrayal of my own common sense.
We saw some cheetahs lying in the sun at the bottom of Ngorongoro Crater in December. They are truly magnificent creatures.
But they aren’t kitty cats: they are killers. And that’s the way it should be. We should leave them alone while admiring them – and protecting their habitat – from afar.
{ 19 comments }
And…?
Come on guys, everyone celebrates Darwin Day in their own special way. Let’s not be judgemental. Instead, let us rejoice in her decision to enrich our gene pool with her absence.
If only there was video. Or audio. “Here kitty, nice kitty, aww you’re so — AAHHHHHHHH!!” (chewing sounds)
I couldn’t disagree more on your take of zoos.
Most developed world zoos have moved away from the simple ‘collection’ ethic. While they do continue to have ‘collections’ of various animals, they are not just kept in cages to provide entertainment for the visitors.
Most major zoos now work in a coordinated manner to preserve wildlife. Most animals in them are not captured from the wild but are, instead, the product of captive breeding. The National Zoo in DC, for instance, has several 1,000-acre areas in which they breed animals both for sale/share with other facilities and to preserve animals already endangered in the wild.
There is nothing morally wrong, IMO, in providing to people who will never get to Kenya or Tanzania or Australia with an opportunity to see these animals for themselves. Personal experience is rather more than what’s covered by a video experience. If you doubt that, consider your sex life restricted only to watching porn. See the difference?
“the cheetahs betrayed her trust”..definitely Darwin Award material.
Speaking of Darwin awards, I probably would have taken the leopard’s picture :-)
John B
Uhm… No I don’t. Your comparison is a poor one, since the “personal experience” you equate with seeing an animal in a cage is more akin to a peep show than to sex. You can’t touch the animals (just like you can’t touch the girls at Club Risque – or so they say!)
If you want to see wildlife, go camping. There’s plenty of wildlife around in the US, and it’s cheap too. If you need to see The Big Five, Africa isn’t as far nor as expensive as you might think. The experience you get from riding a SUV through a herd of wildebeast on the Serengeti Plain will beat days spent watching a small herd stand in their own crap at a zoo. I took the entire family there in December, and it didn’t cost much more than a trip to Europe.
As for the captive breeding programs, they aren’t nowhere near as effective as keeping the animals on the land. One of the dirty little secrets of zoos is the low success rates are of the breeding programs versus their cost. On a dollar-dollar basis, your best bargain is to buy the land the animals are on and leave them alone. But the captive breeding programs are very high-profile, and net the zoos major bucks. So I don’t see them going away anytime soon – no matter how much I pray they do!
Actually, cheetahs have been kept as pets in the past, and I gather fairly successfully. As big cats go, they’re not that bad. It’s kind of a pity that they never got domesticated like dogs.
And it really is quite different to see an animal and actually know how big it is. You never get size from nature videos, and believe me, I’ve been quite the nature show addict.
As big cats go, they’re not that bad.
House cats are barely domesticated. They’ll still tear you up if you’re not careful. I can only imagine what a cheetah would do if you try to force it to do something it doesn’t want to do (or even if it simply tries to play with you).
Back in 1995, when I was working as a zookeeper, my co-workers and I were greatly saddened to learn of the death of Binky the bear, who was famous for mauling two zoo visitors in separate incidents. We just loved this video:
http://www.stupidcollege.com/items/Polar-Bear-Attack
Favorite Chris Rock quote, regarding the white tiger that attacked Roy Horn of Sigfried &Roy (the magicians, remember):
“They said that Tiger went crazy and attacked him. Went crazy? That tiger didn’t go crazy! That tiger went tiger!!”
Favorite Chris Rock quote? Yeah, that one’s pretty good; but man, there are so many to choose from! The more I hear him, the more I think Mr. Rock is one of the most astute observers of the human condition on stage today.
John,
“I can only imagine what a cheetah would do if you try to force it to do something it doesn’t want to do (or even if it simply tries to play with you).”
There are some advantages. First, Cheetahs aren’t that big. They’re roughly the size of an irish wolfhound. Second, they don’t have razor-sharp claws. Their claws aren’t retractable, and are used like a dog’s in running. Third, by the standards of big cats they’re extremely shy and timid.
Also, cheetahs have been pretty successfully kept as pets through human history.
But I would recommend if you want to keep a large predator as a pet, that you be the one who feeds it and does other nice things to it. Very few people are actually nice to strangers; I wouldn’t expect better of a cat, dog, alligator, etc.
Scott: Camping is fun, but it’s not something that’s actually available to a majority of inner city residents. From lack of transportation to lack of funds to pay for even basic gear, it’s out of reach to many. I guess they could go to a city park and watch the squirrels, starlings, and pigeons, hoping to see a rehabbed falcon or something, but it’s not quite the same.
Watching an animal in a good zoo (i.e., not one with tiny cages) does teach something about the world that is inaccessible otherwise.
I don’t think you’ve defeated my analogy, BTW. Start with petting zoos, move up to interactive opportunities at larger zoos, and I guess you can throw in less restrictive franchises of Club Risque, too!
I also wouldn’t diss the captive breeding programs. For quite a number of creatures, they represent the only functional breeding environment available to them. Cheetahs aren’t doing so well in the wild these days, nor are numerous species of antelope. Sandhill cranes, when they can avoid tornadoes, seem to have benefited rather greatly through these programs. Does it work for everything? No, it doesn’t. But then, extinction is as natural as speciation. That doesn’t mean preservation shouldn’t be attempted.
Martin, what’s funny about it is that both Siegried and Roy and those working with them agree that the tiger did not attack Roy.
Having read the accounts, I agree. The tiger hurt him unintentionally. It was trying to help him.
It goes back to understanding animals. Like my pet ferret Z. She’s bit me a few times. I understand exactly why. I’m working on modifying those behaviors. She’s an animal, not a human baby–that’s the most important thing to remember. From there you learn what makes the animal tick, and you don’t do stupid things that would wind up with either you OR the animal hurt or a bused or dead.
Most people don’t get any of that.
I agree with Scott’s view, for the most part. Although I like to go to zoos, I dislike the premise they are built upon. I know, it’s contradictory, and I can’t explain it.
Why is it that we Americans always feel entitled to indulge our desires? Do humane treatment, a working breeding program, a healthy diet, and lots of research REALLY entitle us to snatch animals out of the wild (or breed them in captivity as though that makes it somehow nicer) and put them on review for the curious masses? Are our children REALLY entitled to see these animals “in the flesh”, at the expense of the freedom of the animal? Are we all THAT important that we can screw with nature and believe we can do it all better, safer, more successfully?
Some things just shouldn’t be messed with, and wild animals are one of them. There’s also WAY too much “messing” with domesticated animals, too, IMO. Dog breeding comes immediately to mind, and is a really good example of the American “it’s all about me” psyche that says “I can, therefore I shall”, despite what it does to the innocent animal. It’s right up there with the American outlook of Bigger Is Better. We’re a selfish lot.
I’m in a mood tonight, I guess. Not a lot of patience with idiots, and zoo powers-that-be piss me off just as much as backyard “breeders” of dogs. More selfishness, couched in the “this is good for me, good for the animal, good for everybody” sentiment that I am growing to despise.
And PETA pisses me off tonight, too. Well, PETA pisses me off every night, I guess.
Linda
Didn’t the Egyptians domesticate cheetahs and keep them as pets?
–|PW|–
Individual cheetahs have been tamed, but despite thousands of years of trying to make them a hunting companion, they were never truly domesticated because they’re never very reliable and their mating rituals involve stalking each other for weeks over hundreds of miles (no restraining orders in cheetahdom), so they can’t be bred for docility.
It’s telling that the African grey cat, the wild predecessor of today’s cats, weighs about 40 lbs, while our domesticated version generally weigh less than half that: even at 40 lbs, the first humans found them a threat, and consistently bred them smaller.
Cats are beautiful predators, natual born killers. Like a supernova, though, it’s a beauty best observed from a safe distance.
She walked into a predator’s area, without a rifle. She was prey – not on the top of the food chain. The cheetah reacted as a predator, and she became part of the food chain. Reminds me of the “bear whisperer”.
Otnay Ootay Ightbray.
At least Steve Irwin knew how to wrestle the things. Oh well, man will stop f%&*ing with nature eventually. Conservation is a good idea though. However, conservaqtion from afar is not necessarily as easy as it should be. Poachers and other forces against the animals beyond our control ruin conservation attempts sometimes. Captivity is the only sure way to catapult a population. Also, there are more effective ways of “de-assimilating” animals so that they do not go into the wild and die. The fact that that Cheetah mauled that woman sort of shows that his instincts are still intact. Something that may not have come out years ago.
Captivity is the only sure way to catapult a population.
THWIP!
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
Comments on this entry are closed.