Hold that tiger
The San Francisco Zoo where Tatiana the tiger mauled a teen to death reportedly had an under-height tiger fence because of an Indian urban legend:
… the enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo was only 12 1/2 feet tall. That height, Willis said, can perhaps be traced to an age-old confidence in India, where tigers are common, that a person can ride safely through tiger country atop an elephant, which stands 11 to 13 feet tall. [Link]
Indian tigers are no longer common, but plenty of Internet users know that tigers can easily clear 12 feet. Watch this tiger spring invisible from tall grass and swat at a mahout:
Even this savannah cat, a hybrid of housecat and serval, can leap 7 feet:
Good structural engineers like Joseph Strauss, chief engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge, research their benchmark carefully and then overengineer it two- or three-fold on the assumption that the outer limits under unusual weather and earthquake conditions aren’t really well-understood.
Violating this rule is why that Minneapolis bridge collapsed last summer: bad assumptions about how much weight truss plates could bear, and changing conditions over time which exceeded even those basic limits. And bad engineering assumptions by the Army Corps of Engineers are why the New Orleans levees failed.
What the San Francisco Zoo designers, and other zoo designers worldwide, have done was lackadaisical. What they should have done was take the highest recorded leap by an irritated, provoked tiger — and doubled it.
In contrast, the Minnesota Zoo not only set its tiger fence at 18 feet, it kept lethal fail-safes:
And just in case the fence turned out not to be enough, guns are locked away in four spots scattered around the zoo. Members of a “shoot team” train in marksmanship twice each year — and are under standing orders to kill at once if the escape involves four especially frightening species. [Link]
No word whether those four apex predators include humans.
on Sunday, January 27th, 2008, 7:11 pm in Issues, Tech, Video clips › 
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BTW - strauss was also a consultant on the design of Galloping Gertie ;-). In the case of the GG, its collapse is partly attributed to a design that was chosen for the shallow girders it used to improve aesthetics and save on costs.
my experience is that every decision i have had to make involves a cost to counter every risk - and it gets incrementally more expensive to move the needle after a certain level*. Sometimes it is a design decision to accept a moderate amount of risk, but that estimate is based on historical knowledge which is not complete and can not factor in phenomena that have not transpired. I think of the WTC towers collapse - the pancaking effect had not been expected and is only now being factored into future designs. The Minneapolis bridge had (to my knowledge) not anticipated the structural compromise due to salt damage, a phenomenon that is unique to the colder climes, and thus may not have adequate history in civil engineering. the lack of action on the New Orleans levee was criminal. Somebody should hang for that.
in this case, i think it is right for the kids to go ahead with the lawsuit. the zoo may be safe if the engineers can prove that, to the extent of their knowledge realized through their best effort in information collection, the highest a tiger could jump was less than the height of the enclosure. Even then they may be exposed to the law suit if this is accepted practice (i.e. recognized by a national body of civil engineers, or an appropriate certification arm of the same) that the enclosure must be 2x the maximum known leap of the predator.
*this fundamentally is the whole problem with the US medical system in my very humble opinion. when people want head and body transplants and are willing to pay the big dollars for that, it affects the costs across the board and for the very basic services as well.
Yeah, but we all know Indian tigers are overachievers, so can’t fault Americans for not expecting others to reach those heights.
I saw a couple of videos of Tatiana the tigress in her ‘enclosure’ from a few months ago that people had put on youtube. She’s bounding around, and, while perspective can get screwed up, with camera angles and zooms - she does seem really close in those videos.
But is it a given that she jumped out in one bound? Cats can climb trees - though they can’t easily climb down - and if I remember right, her claws were significantly damaged - as noted after she was shot. It could be that she just scaled the wall of the enclosure. In that case, the height of the wall would not matter so much - the height is a deterrent to a single bound from across the moat - not if she had just climbed out. And that means, even if they get the wall to regulation height, there may still be a risk, unless they make the wall so smooth - like polished marble - that the cat can’t get a grip no matter what - and make it slippery besides, either with artificial lubricant, or by encouraging moss to grow - though it might not grow on something as smooth as marble.
And the same zoo had the case of a polar bear that almost climbed out of its enclosure, and then there was the gorilla that did the same thing in the Dutch zoo. So the problem is more complex than just the height of the wall.
Finally! Will the zookeepers stop looking askance at me when I walk in with my giant tube of KY?
I hope the boys do sue and are then exposed for provoking the animal in the first place. Maybe, that is not the issue, but she hadn’t tried to get out before this incident.
Where’s the second half of the tiger video? That appeared to be a ferocious swipe.
Manish, you do a great job with this site, collecting the web’s tidbits.
Hey, thanks.
The tiger’s hind claws were worn, which sound like one leap plus some scrabbling rather than scaling the entire wall.
Improper, there’s always time for lubricant. I wouldn’t recommend it with a Siberian tiger, but could you set up a webcam?
My day is made.
Obligatory video clip. Orlando Jones is a genius.
Why not? Anyway, here’s a video of when I got some tiger tail.
I am beginning to suspect that your warning comes because you were the one shooting unseen on the grassy knoll as Tatiana jumped back and to the left. Back and to the left!
Yeah, there better be. Because, thanks to khoofia, my boyfriend refers to it as his, ahem, Joginder. Used to be that his prowess reminded me of a Tatiana unleashed, and now all I can think of is an apparently affable,
cluelessclawless Delhi bureaucrat.Paging Dan Savage :(
Sorry to hear of your predickament. It must be very hard.
I dunno, even Savage has been tamed.