Well this gives me pause. I'm sure zoos all over the country are now checking their walls to verify the standards.
SAN FRANCISCO — The director of the zoo where a teenager was killed by an escaped tiger acknowledged Thursday that the wall around the animal's pen was just 12 1/2 feet high _ well below the height recommended by the accrediting agency for the nation's zoos.
San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo also admitted that it is becoming increasingly clear the 350-pound Siberian tiger leaped or climbed out of its open-air enclosure, perhaps by grabbing onto a ledge.
"She had to have jumped," he said. "How she was able to jump that high is amazing to me." Mollinedo said investigators have ruled out the theory the tiger escaped through a door behind the exhibit.
According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the walls around a tiger exhibit should be at least 16.4 feet high. But Mollinedo said the nearly 70-year-old wall was 12 feet, 5 inches, with what he described as a "moat" 33 feet across.
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You know what is even more interesting? This same tiger bit a zoo keeper a few years ago during feeding time. Yum Meat! The Zoo was fined $18K, strangely it was around christmas time then too.
It is very sad that The Tiger had to be put down and even sadder that so many people were killed and injured.
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