Wild animals, particularly wild predators, cannot be befriended, and encounters with them rarely end well for people.
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.
A still image of a video that shows the last few moments of the UK man’s life after he hopped barriers to enter a tiger habitat at Yorkshire Wildlife Park on Oct. 10.
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.
Tigers are the largest and most dangerous big cats, and Amur (Siberian) tigers are the biggest tiger subspecies in the world. Credit: Lars H Knudsen/Pexels
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.”
Stealthy, lethal and skilled, leopards are apex predators, but they contend with bigger cats and pack animals who pose a danger to them and their cubs.
Taxonomic name:Panthera pardus Genus: Panthera (big cats) Weight: Between 82 and 198 pounds with typical felid sexual dimorphism Lifespan: Between 12 and 15 years in the wild and up to 23 years in captivity Gestation: 90 to 105 days, or about three months Litter size: Two to four cubs who remain with their mothers for up to two years Distribution: Leopards boast the widest range of any big cat, with populations in at least 62 countries spanning from sub-Saharan Africa to Russia, China and the Koreas IUCN Red List Status: Vulnerable
Leopards occupy a precarious position in the hierarchy of predators.
They’re true big cats who are extraordinarily dangerous and skilled hunters, but they’re never the baddest on the block by measures of pure size or strength.
Throughout their range, which stretches from the savannas of Africa to the verdant jungles of Asia, they are forced to compete with animals who exceed them in raw physical power, or derive their advantage through strength in numbers.
In Africa leopards, known as panthera pardus in binominal nomenclature, play second fiddle to their sturdier, more intimidating cousins, panthera leo. Lions aren’t just bulkier and brawnier, they’re also unique among big cats because they live in social groups. Lions cooperate on hunts, allowing them to take down anything they come across, and the entire animal kingdom gives them a wide berth.
In Asia leopards bow to the biggest, baddest cats on the planet, panthera tigris. While lots of people mistakenly believe lions are the kings of the cat world, that distinction goes to their striped, stealthy cousins. Tigers are the heaviest, physically largest and most powerful cats, making them the apex predators on land.
A leopard in the Maasai Mara in Kenya. Credit: Sumeet Moghe/Wikimedia Commons
It’s not just other cats who put pressure on leopards. Hyenas, wild dog packs, dangerous herd animals and colossal animals like elephants and rhinos pose a danger to the spotted big felids, if not directly then in competition for food and territory.
So for leopards to successfully thrive, they’re forced to rely on their other unique skill sets, including impressive adaptability and intelligence. They hunt when others rest, eat in places out of reach of their competitors, and know when to cut their losses.
While tigers hunt in daylight, leopards stalk their prey in the darkness. Tigers and lions have the luxury of eating out in the open, as wild dogs know it would be suicidal to lay claim to kills belonging to a pride or a tiger pushing 700 pounds. Leopards aren’t guaranteed that luxury.
Leopards aren’t just physically vulnerable to species they share a range with, they’re also at risk of going hungry. Leopards can expend their finite energy on successful hunts only to be forced to abandon their kills to lion prides and canine packs. They can mitigate the risk by dragging their kills up into trees using their powerful limbs and sure footedness, or taking them into the tangle of the underbrush, though neither method is fool-proof.
Perhaps that’s one reason why, despite being the smallest and lightest of the big cats, leopards have a reputation for being particularly ferocious.
The Champawat tigress, also known as the Demon of Champawat, is history’s most notorious man-eater, but the lesser-known Panar Leopard was equally deadly, with more than 400 confirmed kills. The Leopard of Rudraprayag, contemporary with both, had a shorter reign of terror but took 125 human lives.
All three were killed by the legendary hunter Jim Corbett, whose name was synonymous with taking out man-eaters for decades before he became a big cat conservationist later in life. In his book Man-Eaters of Kumaon, Corbett described leopards as the trickiest big cats to track, and hunting them — as opposed to the canned kills favored by modern “sportsmen” — presents significant physical danger and risk of death even to experienced hunters.
Considering the level of self-awareness, understanding and deceptiveness displayed by animals like the Champawat tigress, who changed her tactics several times as Corbett tried to close in on her and nearly killed him by setting up a clever ambush, for Corbett to attribute even greater wiles to leopards speaks to their extraordinary ability to adapt on the fly and anticipate what their enemy might do.
When it comes to hunting man, there are two things that distinguish leopards from their tiger and lion counterparts. (And if you’re wondering where jaguars fall on the list, they don’t. There are no recorded cases of prolific man-eating jaguars, a fact often attributed to the animals’ tightly controlled abilities and reputation for calmly assessing situations. Jaguars very rarely kill humans, and when they do it’s because people have threatened them or their cubs, leaving them no chance to withdraw safely.)
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
As disruptive as man-eating tigers are, people living in areas stalked by them can find refuge indoors. Tigers hunt by day and won’t enter human-built structures, but leopards have no such limitations.
Both the Panar and Rudraprayag leopards, as well as other man-eaters of their species, were known to barrel through doors or leap through windows at all hours to catch sleeping humans unaware and drag them screaming into the night. It’s pure nightmare fuel and has a profound psychological effect. When man-eating leopards terrorize an area, there’s no true sanctuary.
While lions and tigers become man-eaters due to injuries — broken teeth most commonly — and old age, leopards do so because of opportunity and convenience.
For example, the man-eating leopards who terrorized India in the late 1910s and early 1920s acquired a taste for human flesh because the Spanish flu ripped through regions where they range. Survivors were hesitant to handle their bodies to bury them, and leopards found easy meals. From there, experts believe the big cats realized hunting humans is often easier than hunting agile ungulates and other typical prey — at least in the short term, before humans organize and retaliate.
Leopards are often confused with at least two other cat species, jaguars and pumas. It may be somewhat difficult to tell leopards and jaguars apart in a zoo without the benefit of signage, but in the wild they don’t co-exist. Anyone who encounters a spotted cat in the wild in Africa or Asia is looking at a leopard, while jaguars are native to the Americas, ranging across most of South America and the southern US.
Otherwise, there are visual differences. Jaguars are bulkier and more muscular, with shorter limbs, and their rosettes or “spots” have small flecks inside them. Leopards have longer limbs and may have broken rosettes, but generally do not have the small flecks and dots within their rosettes.
Credit: David Raju/Wikimedia Commons
As for pumas, they look nothing like panthera pardus or panthera onca (jaguars), and they are not true big cats, lacking the ability to roar and boasting a different lineage. But because pumas, jaguars and leopards are all colloquially called “panthers,” some people confuse them.
Both leopards and jaguars have melanistic (black) variants, but their coats are not entirely black. Under the right lighting conditions their rosettes are visible, making it possible to differentiate them visually. There are legends of melanistic pumas, but no one’s been able to verify them.
As opportunistic hunters, a leopard’s lunch or dinner is whatever it can reasonably catch, and along with pumas they’re generalists and will eat just about anything despite their individual preferences.
They’re masterfully stealthy and can ambush prey in a multitude of ways, including from above thanks to their excellent climbing abilities. Leopards are exceptionally strong despite their relatively small size compared to other big cats, and they’re able to drag carcasses larger and heavier than themselves up trees. They can descend from trees head-first, giving them an enormous advantage when attacking from elevation.
A leopard cub. Credit: Chris Eason/Wikimedia Commons
Sadly, leopards numbers are in decline across the world. Habitat fragmentation plays a major part, as does poaching to feed the insatiable Chinese traditional “medicine” market for big cat parts, which are used in tonics and folk recipes. They’re also hunted by nomadic tribes in Africa for their skins.
Then there’s the cruelty of nature itself. As adaptable and successful as adult leopards are, getting to that point involves trial and error, lots of learning and luck. By some estimates fewer than half of leopard cubs reach adulthood, with the others succumbing to other predators, poachers and illegal wildlife traders who sell the cubs to people who buy them as status symbol pets.
For more information about conservation efforts, visit the WildCat Conservation Alliance and Panthera, two of the largest global organizations dedicated to preserving leopards and other wild cat species.
Their greatest strength was also their greatest weakness, which is why modern big cats have smaller, sturdier teeth.
Saber-toothed cats — an umbrella term for a wide variety of felid species with massive, scimitar-like teeth — are some of the most terrifying prehistoric predators, carnivorousness incarnate.
But it turns out the teeth that give them their name and their fearsome reputation were also their greatest weakness.
The problem? While the oversized upper canines were optimal for delivering kill bites and tearing into flesh, they could break if the teeth met bone with force.
“Slicing and crushing are basically the two main things a carnivorous mammal’s teeth can do,” said Narimane Chatar, a postdoc at UC Berkeley studying carnivores. “But for saber-toothed animals, there’s a clear trade off. Those upper canines were extremely efficient but also break very easily.”
As experts on extant big cats are well aware, a hypercarnivore with broken or damaged fangs can struggle to take down their typical prey. That’s what often turns tigers, leopards and lions into man-eaters. (Interestingly, there are no documented accounts of man-hunting jaguars. Jaguar attacks on humans are exceedingly rare, and while they have killed humans, there’s no jaguar equivalent of the Chamapawat Tiger or the Leopard of Rudraprayag.)
A reconstruction of Smilodon, commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, although it’s not closely related to modern tigers.A reconstruction of Megantereon, a saber-toothed cat that went extinct as late as 350,000 years ago.
During her research, Chatar found the skull and teeth of a saber-toothed cat in Berkeley’s archives and realized it was not the same species associated with saber-toothed cats in the Americas.
Although Smilodon and Homotherium are the most well-known species, “there was a crazy variety of saber-toothed cats,” Chatar said.
Her research has confirmed the prehistoric cat’s sword-like fangs were double-edged, literally and figuratively. Per UC Berkeley:
“In simulations, 3D-printed saber teeth from various species proved ideal at penetrating a gel with the consistency of flesh but fractured easily against simulated bone. In the former tests, Smilodon came out on top. In the latter, Smilodon fared the worst.“
Smilodon lived in the Americas and went extinct about 8,200 years ago. Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits have yielded a number of preserved skeletal remains, making Smilodon and its three sub-species among the best-known prehistoric felids.
Smilodon and Megantereon images via Wikimedia Commons.
The California man was hunting another animal when a herd of African elephants charged him and his professional guide.
The reaction to the trampling death of a “big game hunter” this month can be broken down to two main camps.
One side is in a celebratory mood, saying Ernie Dosio deserved to be trampled by African elephants on April 17 in Gabon, central Africa. His death was poetic justice, they say, delivered by animals of a species Dosio hunted, whose preserved and mounted heads he proudly displayed on his extensive trophy walls back home in California.
On the opposite end are people engaged in the hagiography of the 75-year-old business owner, describing him as a “pillar of the community” and a “great guy” who gave generously to charity.
We like our narratives black and white, our heroes and villains clearly delineated. To most people, Dosio was one or the other.
In reality, the two sides of Dosio are not mutually exclusive. It’s entirely possible he was a good member of the community who had compassion for people. It’s also true that contrary to claims that he was a “conservation hunter,” Dosio took pride in killing animals from critically endangered and protected species, like many who think their wealth entitles them to rob the Earth of wonderful and unique forms of life so they can collect trophies.
Dosio posing with an elephant he killed on an earlier trip.
Indeed, the concept of a “conservation hunter” is an oxymoron. The pro-hunting side says the fees hunters pay for licenses, guides and other services are crucial to fund conservation efforts.
The truth is that the majority of the money finds its way into the pockets of officials in kleptocracies. If the contributions of so-called conservation hunters are supposed to make a difference, then reality proves them to be an abject failure: population numbers for endangered species like elephants, lions, cheetahs and rhinos continue to trend down, and those species will be extinct in a decade or two if we don’t put a stop to poaching, hunting, habitat loss and other threats.
I also have a problem with calling these people hunters.
These men and women are not Jim Corbett roughing it on foot in the British Raj, using their skill and knowledge of the land to take out vicious man-eaters at great risk to themselves.
They are weekend warriors, wealthy tourists who pay tens of thousands of dollars to kleptocratic governments for their blessing to “harvest” the animals they kill. It’s big business: in South Africa alone, the trophy hunting industry brought in $120 million, according to a 2015 estimate. That number is likely considerably higher today.
When he was killed, Dosio was hunting for a yellow-backed duiker, a rare antelope listed as near-threatened on the IUCN red list. He paid Gabon’s government a $40,000 fee to “harvest” the animal.
Trophy hunters don’t stalk by moonlight, rifle in hand, looking for tracks and camping rough.
They are chauffeured around by hired drivers in comfortable, climate-controlled luxury off-road vehicles. They have servants who pitch their tents, cook their meals, light their fires and guard their camps.
They do not track their targets. They pay men to lure the unsuspecting creatures directly into their paths using food as a lure. The lions, leopards and other animals they kill don’t even realize they’re being hunted before the rifle shots end their lives.
Then the hunters retreat to the air-conditioned comfort of their vehicles while their hired servants do the dirty work of beheading the animals so they can be packed up, prepped for display and shipped back to the US, where they will join the heads of other animals killed by these wealthy men and women. Men and women who proudly show off their kills when they invite people to their homes, recounting their heroics to the bored guests, who make appropriately polite noises to pretend they’re impressed.
In addition to the 30 or so animals on display here, photos show the walls on the rest of Dosio’s home are covered with the preserved heads and bodies of animals he’s killed.
Nothing about this grotesque sequence of events resembles hunting. It is killing. It requires no skill, it carries no risk, its outcome is never in doubt, and it serves no purpose other than to pad the egos of people who have lots of disposable income and little self-confidence.
They have their defenders and their haters.
“I knew I was going to enjoy this,” one person wrote in response to a news story about Dosio’s demise.
“Do you think the elephants will mount his head on their walls?” another joked.
Some people speculated that the elephants, a species with notoriously long memories, may have remembered him from a prior encounter.
The more likely explanation is the elephants saw Dosio and one of his guides, both carrying weapons, as a threat to the calf they were protecting. Rather than put the baby and themselves at risk, they attacked first. If that’s the case, humans are at fault for that too, because the elephants know people carrying guns do not have good intentions. It may not have been Dosio who killed a member of that particular herd, but odds are overwhelming that someone has, and the elephants haven’t forgotten.
While celebrating Dosio’s death may provide a cheap dopamine hit and a sense of righteous justice, to be truly on the side of life means to value all forms of it, animal and human.
Dosio, 75, was reportedly a millionaire and owned a business that partnered with vineyards in California.
Celebrating Dosio’s demise means we’re no better than the “hunters” who grin like psychopaths for photos with the animals they’ve just killed. It makes those of us concerned about animal welfare and conservation look like extremists, and it only takes a few bad actors to wreck the efforts of an entire group. If a thousand protesters gather in a city square and two of them become violent, the resulting headlines will be about those two, not the 998 others who peacefully made their opinions known.
The way to fight back against trophy killing is by educating the public about the damage those killers do, by countering their claims that the fees they pay protect other animals, and by pointing out that without drastic intervention, elephants, lions and cheetahs will be nothing more than memories for a few generations, and near-myth to subsequent generations.
Killing, not hunting: this photo of an unnamed trophy hunter and his wife is instructive because it shows trophy “hunts” are never in doubt, never pose a risk to the “hunters,” and require no physical ability.
This also calls for self examination. On an Instagram account I made for Buddy, one I log into two or three times I year, I follow a handful of National Geographic photographers.
One of their images remains indelibly burned into my brain: a beautiful tiger cub, looking happy and full of curiosity about the world, gazing right at the camera. Even though I know I’m anthropomorphizing a bit, I can’t help feeling good about the expression on the young tiger’s face, an expression that looks like an enthusiastic grin. He is radiating joy at life.
And then I read the caption. This cub, this beautiful animal of a species that teeters on the edge of extinction, is growing up on a hunting reserve. His fate is already set. He will be killed, his life cut short by another weekend warrior paying to “harvest” him and mount his head on a wall so he can tell stories about his own bravery to bored friends and acquaintances.
That’s not just inhumane, it reveals something deeply disturbing about the kind of people who take pleasure from killing. Something primal, something that has no place in our civilization if we’re going to mature as a species, overcome our violent instincts, and have a future on this planet without destroying ourselves and taking every other form of life with it.
That’s why we need to be on the side of life. The alternative is reducing this garden world, this paradise, into a cold, lifeless rock.
Jaguars, pumas, ocelots and margays are able to thrive in the same jungles, a unique arrangement that sheds light on how each species lives.
The jungles of Guatemala are teeming with life.
The guttural calls of howler monkeys haunt the rainforest from above, where scarlet macaws hop branches in flashes of red, yellow and blue.
On the forest floor opossums, peccaries, and oversize rodents called pacas move through dense brush, occasionally picked out by the few shafts of light able to break through the canopy. Ocellated turkeys plumed in iridescent copper and emerald advertise themselves to potential mates with thumping sounds, while spider monkeys perch on the weathered stones of long-forgotten Mayan cities that were swallowed by the jungle centuries ago.
As in most tropics, the apex predators are cats — four different species, to be exact. Jaguars sit at the top, unchallenged. Pumas, close in size if not ferocity, also find sustenance in the rainforest alongside ocelots and margays.
Margays are smaller than house cats and resemble tiny ocelots. They’re outstanding climbers, expert hunters, and spend most of their time in trees. Unlike most cat species, which are crepuscular, margays are nocturnal. Credit: Clement Bardot/Wikimedia Commons
How do four medium carnivorous species exist side by side?
By dividing time, space and items on the menu, according to a new study.
Ocelots are extremely adaptable: they’re excellent climbers and swimmers, and can thrive in various environments. Credit: Victor Landaeta/Pexels
The felids hunt at different levels of the jungle at different times of day, and while there’s overlap between prey, each species has its own distinct diet, according to a research team from Oregon State University. Their paper, Niche partitioning among neotropical felids, was published earlier this month in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
As the big kids on the block, jaguars primarily eat peccaries (pig-like ungulates that weigh up to 88 pounds), armadillos, deer and, sadly, ocelots. Apparently membership in Club Felid does not grant the smaller wildcats a pass. Ocelots top out at about 35 pounds, while the largest jaguars weigh in at about 350 pounds, making the smaller cats easy prey.
Pumas opportunistically prey on peccaries and brocket deer, but the majority of their diet is composed of monkeys, both spider and howler. Ocelots and margays naturally go for smaller prey, sticking mostly to rodents and opossums.
As the largest and most powerful cats in the western hemisphere, jaguars are the apex predators of their environment. Credit: Atlantic Ambience/Pexels
While jaguars hunt on the ground and have a well-documented habit of slipping into the water to prey on caiman and crocodiles, pumas, ocelots and margays take advantage of their climbing abilities and lighter frames to reach arboreal prey. That allows pumas, for example, to snag monkeys and arboreal opossum species from the canopy, so they don’t have to compete with jaguars.
The team verified the “spatial, temporal, and dietary niche partitioning” within the Maya Biosphere Reserve by using ground camera traps, arboreal camera traps and fecal samples, which allowed them to confirm the prey each species has been consuming.
Interestingly, margays are the pickiest — or perhaps most limited — of the bunch, preying on only seven species, while the other three cats regularly hunt between 20 and 27 different kinds of animals.
The information gleaned from the study not only helps researchers understand how these species interact with their environment, but also can help guide conservation decisions to safeguard them against extinction.
Pumas, also known as cougars and mountain lions, are adaptable and elusive. Credit: Catherine Harding Wiltshire/Pexels
