David Villalobos told detectives he wanted to be “one with the tiger.”
So the New York man jumped off the monorail at the Bronx Zoo and into the Wild Asia exhibit, where his 10-minute encounter with a tiger named Bashuta resulted in a punctured lung, a broken arm, and bite wounds on his arms, legs, shoulders and back.
Mercifully, and contrary to his nature as a predator, Bashuta did not kill Villalobos, and while Villalobos almost got his wish “to be one with” the male Siberian tiger, his consolation prize was life – and a trespassing charge from the NYPD.
I remember the 2012 incident well because I was working as a reporter for Newsday at the time and I was in the newsroom the night it happened, placing calls to Villalobos’ family and neighbors in an attempt to understand why he’d willingly enter an apex predator’s enclosure.
On Saturday a UK man — whose name has not been publicly released yet by authorities — jumped into the tiger enclosure at the UK’s Yorkshire Wildlife Park. He wasn’t as lucky, and zoo visitors filmed the last few moments of his life as the big cat — also an endangered Siberian (Amur) — mauled him.
Like the incident at the Bronx Zoo, the enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park had adequate barriers and the man circumvented several of them to put himself in danger.
The big cat was unharmed and will not be euthanized. The incident “was in no way the tiger’s fault,” said Ron Magill, a wildlife photographer and communications director for Zoo Miami.
“It’s just so hard to guarantee against someone who’s determined to do something,” Magill told CNN in an interview a few hours after the incident.
The wildlife park was evacuated and remained closed for the weekend. In the meantime, UK authorities asked people not to continue sharing footage uploaded by several bystanders.
“I say this with profound respect for my profession, but we have to do a better job of making people understand these are not Disney animals,” Magill said. “This is not a play exhibit. We do not play with these animals. They are not our pets. And they can be much more dangerous because they have lost that natural fear of people. “
They’re also territorial, and from their perspective their enclosures are their territories. Zoo visitors who drop in are curiosities to explore by pawing at them at best, and uninvited, unwanted invaders at worst.
It’s a lesson quite a few people need to learn, apparently. US national park rangers have been begging people to keep their distance from wild animals over the past few years after several incidents involving tourists approaching dangerous wildlife to pet them, take selfies with them, and generally infringe on their space.
In July, 65-year-old Carl Isom-McDaniel was photographing a bison with his granddaughter when the 2,000 pound animal charged at him and launched him high into the air, using its horns in a display of raw power serving as a reminder that humans are physically nowhere near the top of the food chain.
Isom-McDaniel’s incident, in which he suffered multiple femur fractures among other injuries, happened less than two weeks after a 12-year-old was attacked and hospitalized after getting too close to a bison near Yellowstone’s “mud volcano.”
At the time, park officials noted bison have been involved in more attacks on visitors than any other species in the park.
“They are unpredictable, can run three times faster than humans and will defend their space when threatened,” a statement from the US National Park Service read.
Although it may seem obvious that mixing with predators or even large herbivores is a bad idea, Magill said some people still have the impression they can somehow make friends with wild animals.
That misconception may be compounded by the ubiquity of social media posts showing tourists in Asian wildlife parks, where tigers are often heavily sedated so guests can enter their enclosures to touch them and pose for selfies with them. It is a form of animal abuse by every definition, but some people don’t want to hear that.
“We see this over and over again, people who try to get close to animals, cuddle the animals, thinking … that this is their pet,” Magill said. “That’s not the case. These animals should not be approached.”
I think what we need to do is challenge this idea that animals are here to solely serve at our pleasure.
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I agree wholeheartedly.
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Yes, I want to pet the tiger. But I learned, beginning with wise parenting and continuing through life with warnings from all sides, that I can’t. Anyone who thinks they can has been grievously undereducated. (or high) Outlawing petting zoos might help a little. Petting zoos can give the impression wild animals are safe. They also are an abuse of those animals by making them endure an unnatural and invasive situation. And as mentioned in the previous comment, they further the impression that animals are on Earth to serve us.
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Parenting and the education system as well. I remember going on school field trips to the animal circus when I was a kid, and there wasn’t so much of a suggestion by our teachers or parents that the animals did not enjoy jumping through hoops and standing on buckets, nor did we have the faintest clue it takes coercion, abuse and fear to make them perform.
You’re right, respecting and admiring wild animals means doing so from a distance. If we want to pet animals, we can pet our feline overlords…when they permit it.
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Happy the tiger wasn’t held accountable. Glad the dumb shite is dead. Good kitty…
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The guy could have been mentally ill. We don’t know much at all at this point, likely because the police had to notify the man’s family and establish exactly what happened, but several stories say the man was dancing and laughing, and saying he was going to see the tiger before he leaped the barricades and dropped into the enclosure.
The zoo identified the tiger as Altai, an Amur tiger who just turned five years old about two weeks ago. He looks like the dictionary definition of a massive, powerful tiger in photos taken before, but what’s interesting is you can see he looks confused, with “helicopter ears,” when the man drops into the enclosure, and at first it looks like he doesn’t know how to react. I am basing this on stills, since I’ve learned my lesson about watching things you can’t unsee, and I have no desire to see video of a man mauled to death by a tiger, or any other animal for that matter.
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I almost understand people wanting to pet the fluffy cows
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They really are fluffy and moognificent animals.
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But with very short tempers! (Yes, I saw what you did there. 😉 )MaryOn Oct 12, 2026,
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The incident at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park was desperately sad – for staff, for witnesses to the event and of course for the poor guy who met his end there. We know YWP well, and visit several times per year The official investigation is still ongoing but the time we’ve spent there leads me to believe that the Park is well run, with every effort made to keep safe both visitors and the animals they come to see.
I’m relieved that the tiger is not to be euthanised (nor, indeed, am I aware of any demands for this). The event is a potent reminder that wild animals are indeed wild, even if they are held in an extensive, comfortable enclosure, and their wild instincts will kick in if anyone intrudes on their patch.
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Wild animals are beautiful but dangerous; we cannot blame animals for behaving the way millions of years of evolution have shaped them to behave. I truly feel sorry for the man who died that way.
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Mental illness can be brutal. It takes a lot to completely shortcircuit 200,000 years of evolutionary hardwiring for self-preservation.
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You’re right; we can’t really say that the man who went in did so knowing the risk he was taking.
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Did not hear about this incident. As much as i would love to pet a wild feline they must be ASLEEP!!
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I’ve said elsewhere that I think “Companion Animal Character and Care” should be taught in schools. Now I think similar education is needed regarding all animals, those in zoos, those in neighborhoods, and the wild ones tourists might encounter. When we lived in the woods I learned that lovely deer, now seen in many neighborhoods, can be very aggressive during mating season. I also read and studied about snakes. But not everyone looks everything up.
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I am very sad for the man who died, though I of course can’t blame the tiger.
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I’ll never forget something I witnessed Philadelphia Zoo years ago.
I was in the one of the buildings where there are wildcats – the lions, the tigers, the leopards, etc. etc. The cats have cages, but at the back of the cage is an exit to their outside enclosure.
That day, one of the cats – I forget what it was, leopard, maybe – was sleeping in its cage.
In front of the cages there’s a bar, about eight feet away from the cage, behind which the public can view the cats.
Among the crowd there was this totally moronic grandmother, who wanted her six year- old
grand-daughter to go under the bar, and stand next to the cage so Grandmom could take a picture of little Susie with the leopard/tiger/lion/whatever it was.
Granny was soooo ticked off when one of the zookeepers caught wind of what she was saying, and read her the riot act.
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A perfect example of what the zoo experts were saying about how even the best enclosure designs aren’t guaranteed to stop people determined to put their lives in danger.
I’m sure that grandmother would have been indignant and sued the zoo for an exorbitant amount of money if Little Susie was hurt or killed.
It’s also worth mentioning that some animals can escape their enclosures if they want and choose not to. There was that famous incident at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day in 2007, involving a trio of fools who taunted a tiger. She leapt over the enclosure barriers, killed one of the men and mauled the other two.
Knowing domestic cats can leap up to six times their own body length, it doesn’t surprise me that a tiger could do that.
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