Witnesses described the harrowing encounter as a woman fell into the silver-furred Buddy exhibit at the Bronx Zoo this week.
NEW YORK – Corey Anderson couldn’t watch as the woman tumbled into the zoo habitat.
The Manhattan man had taken his kids to the zoo and the little ones were pointing excitedly at the silver-furred Buddy exhibit when a woman climbed the barrier to get a better look, slipped and fell into the enclosure with the tiny apex predator.
“I grabbed my kids, shielded their eyes and had just turned away,” Anderson recalled with a shudder. “The sounds…it was horrific. It sounded like an enraged Elmo demolishing a plate of wings.”
Smartphone footage shot by other guests confirmed the grisly sequence. The woman landed awkwardly but was apparently unhurt as she stood and began to dust herself off, unaware of the intimidating shadow creeping up on her from behind.
“Absolute mayhem,” is the way Franz Muller described it. “Die mächtige katze! Das grauen! I have never seen ankles bleed as much as I have on this day!”
After initially shocking the uninvited guest with a swipe at her bare skin, the silver-furred Buddy proferred a single paw as if expecting something from the woman, “but when it became clear she was empty-handed, the Buddy flew into a rage and launched himself at her lower extremities,” Muller said.
Zookeepers arrived quickly amid the screams of shocked guests and held up a vacuum in warning, the footage shows. When the silver-furred Buddy hissed but showed no signs of retreating, one of the zookeepers flipped the power switch.
“The Buddy stopped, hackles raised, then bolted for the safety of his den,” said another witness, Eleni Xanthopoulou.
The silver-furred Buddy with Lyle, center, and Sir Malcolm Murray, president of the zoo’s board of trustees.
The victim, a 32-year-old interior designer, was rushed to an emergency medical clinic, where she was treated for “multiple lacerations to the ankles, feet and lower legs,” police said.
Bronx Zoo Officials said the silver-furred Buddy would not be punished for the attack.
“He did nothing wrong,” head carnivore keeper Ferdinand Lyle said as he cradled the deadly cat. “He’s such a good boy. Who’s a good boy? You are, aren’t you? Yes, yes, a good boy!”
The visitor’s strange behavior and the crowd’s panicked screams began to override the tiger’s initial confused curiosity, prompting his predatory instincts to kick in.
A British man killed this weekend by a zoo tiger was mentally “vulnerable” and behaved bizarrely before and during his grisly encounter, police and witnesses said.
William Chapman, described in media reports as “in his early 20s,” was seen laughing and dancing before he hopped the barriers separating guests at Yorkshire Wildlife Park from its Land of the Tigers exhibit.
Chapman suffered from “significant mental illness,” his family wrote in a statement.
In audio captured a few minutes before Chapman’s 1:30 pm death on Oct. 10, the late Briton handed his smartphone to another visitor and asked the woman to take photos of him with the tiger in the background.
“Thank you, lady,” he’s heard saying on the recording before he climbed the barriers in front of horrified guests and dropped into the enclosure housing Altai, an Amur tiger who just turned five years old about two weeks ago.
Altai. Credit: Yorkshire Wildlife Park
The encounter took an even stranger turn from there as Chapman, who was live-streaming to Instagram, seemed to welcome Altai. The curious big cat hopped down from a wooden platform where he’d been soaking up the sun and padded unhurriedly toward Chapman, who spread his arms theatrically.
“It looked like a performance,” bystander Anthony Hunt said. “He got down where everyone could see him in the main viewing area. He was on all fours, praying and bowing down to the tiger. It was like he was waiting for the tiger.”
Still images show Altai standing in a confused, non-aggressive posture, with telltale “helicopter ears” indicating curiosity and hesitation about how to respond.
Chapman’s behavior didn’t fit Altai’s cognitive script.
The tiger’s hardwired instincts told him incursions from other members of his species are threats. His experiences in captivity told him humans are caretakers who show up at predictable times as part of a daily routine to feed him, repair his enclosure or introduce enrichment items. This was something entirely new.
A still from footage recorded by a witness to Saturday afternoon’s fatal encounter.
While I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to watching video of things I can’t unsee and have no desire to watch footage of a man’s life ending in a violent mauling, I did watch short clips of the preceding moments. They were compiled from recordings by bystanders and Chapman’s own feed.
The moment the situation changed was unambiguous, and you can see exactly when Altai became overstimulated and his predatory drive kicked in: Chapman dropped to all fours, reducing his physical profile until he resembled prey, and the panicked screams from the crowd of onlookers pushed Altai into overstimulation and hypervigilance.
He knew the encounter had taken a turn, and that’s when he took his first few exploratory swipes, still pulling his punches as he tried to figure out what was happening.
Chapman responded by assuming a defensive posture, raising a finger to the big cat while shouting “No! No!” and chiding him for being “naughty.” To the tiger, Chapman confirmed he was prey.
At the same time the screams from above grew louder. Altai’s predatory instincts were fully engaged, and according to reports that’s when he mauled Chapman and delivered a kill bite to the UK man’s neck.
Chapman’s family said he was taking “strong medication” to help manage mental health issues.
Zookeepers who rushed to the scene fired warning shots, sending Altai scurrying for the safety of his den. A medical airlift helicopter arrived a few minutes later, but by then it was too late. Chapman had bled out and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities erected screens to conceal the carnage as staff closed the zoo. Footage of guests leaving showed bystanders in shock, discussing what they’d just witnessed as they shuffled through the exit.
One woman, a mother who tried to stop Chapman from leaping, was particularly disturbed. She did not speak to reporters.
Chapman “looked like he was taking selfies” after dropping into the habitat, 21-year-old Scarlet Hogan told The Telegraph.
“Up until he got attacked, it was like he was in a trance, not in reality at all,” Hogan said.
“He had arms wide open ready for the tiger to attack him. It was quite bad. We were just stood there, frozen… the last thing we saw was the tiger’s jaw on his neck.”
Altai pictured in promotional material for the park.
Chapman, who had traveled from nearby Doncaster to the zoo, was an actor who had roles in productions by the BBC and ITV.
“The man who I saw on the bridge with his AirPods in, dancing, was happily enjoying seeing the tiger,” witness Marie Miller said.
Park staff said Altai, whose subspecies is critically endangered, will not be euthanized, and witnesses who spoke to the BBC said staff promptly took control and shut the park down.
Neither the zoo nor the tiger were at fault, said the University of Reading’s Campbell Murn, a former member of the UK government’s Zoo Experts Committee.
“I view it in the same way a determined thief will get into somebody’s house or somebody’s car,” Murn said, “and despite the best security systems and enclosures sometimes these things happen.”
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.”
“I say, dear fellow, would you have any Grey Poupon? This roast is rather dry, and the zookeepers do not take me seriously when I tell them human will be on the menu if they don’t shape up!”
This photo of a chatty lion was taken at Lo Zoo di Napoli (Naples Zoo) in Italy by BoBB, aka Brother of Big Buddy:
For a brief moment, since it is April 1, I considered writing a post about how the Somalian pirates who briefly “bought” Buddy a few years ago returned with an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I sent the little dude packing for the pirate life once again.
But then I remembered the emails I got, including one from a woman who said she was heartbroken by my betrayal of the Budster.
So no April Fools’ Day, because as fun as it is to imagine Bud joining a pirate crew, I can’t have some people thinking I’d abandon him. He’s here to stay!
Zoologists were at a loss to explain how the tabby cat moved effortlessly among the big cats without becoming a light snack.
NEW YORK — Zoo visitors and keepers alike were flabbergasted at the sight of a small gray tabby cat lounging in several big cat enclosures on Monday.
Zoologists and a security team were called to the tiger exhibit at 11:45 am when guests reported the domestic cat had somehow entered the enclosure and had settled down between two adult Bengal tigers for a nap.
“It almost looked like the little cat was demonstrating his form for the tigers,” said Al Farelli, who brought his two girls to the zoo Monday and witnessed the strange event. “Both tigers copied the small cat’s posture and then they all dozed off.”
Buddy the Cat enjoying a late morning nap with tigers Zeus, left, and Achilles, right.
Zookeepers, initially fearing for the tiny cat’s safety, were conferring and were trying to coax the domestic feline toward a keeper entrance when the little cat lifted his head and hissed. Zeus, taking notice, followed the smaller cat’s lead and growled at the keepers.
“Never seen anything like it, and I’ve been working with predators for more than 20 years,” said Wendy Johnson, a senior zookeeper.
Zoo staff breathed a sigh of relief when the feline left the enclosure about an hour later, but were incredulous when they received guest reports that the cat had popped up again in Jaguar Jungle.
“We’re just standing there and admiring these majestic big cats when a gray kitty comes padding into the enclosure with his tail up, as if he didn’t have a care in the world,” said Melissa Matthews, a Manhattanite who was at the park with friends.
“Then when the jaguars saw him I gasped because I thought he was about to become an hors d’oeuvre for one of them,” she said, shuddering. “But they chuffed happily, exchanged paw bumps with the little guy and groomed him.”
Once again, the tabby cat settled down for a nap, laying on top of a jaguar named Ixchel.
Buddy finally made his way to the lion exhibit by late afternoon, settling down to nap with a lion named Colossus.
Meanwhile a New York man arrived at the zoo, explaining he’d seen clips of the bizarre scene on social media and recognized the feline as his cat, Buddy.
“He’s always doing this!” the man told zoo staff. “There was the time leopards almost ate him on the Masi Mara, the incident in the Amazon when he took ayahuasca with jaguar shamans, and the debacle when he tried to make himself king of the rusty spotted cats.”
As of late Monday the man was seen arguing with the silver tabby and trying to bribe him out of the enclosure with an impressive snack spread.
