White Tigers attack Zoo Cleaner

I heard about this incident this morning, so I decided to search online for the report on it. To my surprise, this is what most reports say on this incident (globally):

A newspaper says three Bengal white tigers have mauled to death a Singapore Zoo cleaner who fell into a moat surrounding their enclosure.

The Straits Times says the tigers pounced on Nordin Mondong of Malaysia when he fell into the moat Thursday. Terrified zoo visitors screamed, alerting zoo workers who managed to distract two of the tigers.

However, the third tiger continued to maul the 32-year-old Nordin. The report says he died on the way to a hospital.

Each of the tigers weighs more than 220 pounds (100 kilograms).

Bengal white tigers in the wild are found in South Asia, mostly in India.

(Taken from Yahoo News)

Over-Aggressive Tigers?

I was appalled when I read that version above (which appeared most frequently - if you don't believe me go google), so I went to search for the full story within Singapore websites.

Of course, the tigers were not being 'over-aggresive'. I found a more representative article here on what happened.

The more important parts of the article are:

According to eyewitnesses, Mr Nordin, who was seen shouting and flinging items about shortly before the incident, vaulted a low wall and landed in a moat in the enclosure, four metres below.

Carrying a yellow pail and a broom, he then crossed the 1.75m-deep moat, walked up to a rocky ledge near where the animals were and began agitating them by swinging the broom.

As two of the tigers approached him, he covered his head with the pail, lay down on the ground, and curled himself into a foetal position, two eyewitnesses, an Australian couple, told police.

and :

His colleagues later told zoo staff that the contract worker, who had been working at the zoo for about 4 1/2 months, had been behaving strangely minutes before the incident.

He had thrown his cutters and meal coupons about before telling them in Malay: 'Goodbye, you won't be seeing me again.'

He then rode off on his bicycle.

This incident sounds to me like suicide. He was already acting weirdly before the incident, and he had even told his colleagues "Goodbye, you won't be seeing me again". He left the zoo, then returned 5 minutes later to aggravate the white tigers, jump into their moat and just lie there with a pail over his head. All these were done when he was not even in charge of cleaning the tiger enclosure.

The tigers, I felt, were just acting naturally. They were not at fault.

The Zoo's Role

Of course, the zoo could have handled things better to avoid the death. There were men who held guns, but nothing was done. Some have posted on forums saying that they needn't have shot to kill, but could have just fired warning shots to scare the tigers. I agree with them on that.

Alternatively, since the zoo will be dealing with possibly endangered animals, they could have used tranquilisers instead of bullets. That way, you can still do something when emergencies like these arise. What is the point of having people there with arms when they are not well-equipped to handle emergencies?

Signing off... ...