A woman was attacked by a zoo animal after trying to get close to it, her reason was that she wanted to take a selfie with the jaguar.
According to NBC News, the woman, who is in her thirties, climbed over a barrier outside the jaguar’s enclosure at Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium and Safari Park in Arizona. The woman went close enough to a distance where the jaguar was in range to have a swipe at her, lacerating her arm severely.
Wildlife World Zoo stated, “’We regret to inform that this evening, before closing there was an incident reported involving a guest, who crossed over the barrier to get a photo, according to eye witnesses. The visitor sustained non-life threatening injuries to their arm from one of our female jaguars. At the request of the family, paramedics were called. At no time was the animal out of its enclosure. The incident is being fully investigated.”
According to zoo director Mickey Ollson, the jaguar had swiped at another person in the past month. But the zoo stated on Twitter that they would not put the jaguar down, writing, “We can promise you nothing will happen to our jaguar. She’s a wild animal and there were proper barriers in place to keep our guests safe- not a wild animals fault when barriers are crossed. Still sending prayers to (the woman) and her family.”
The zoo remains firm on their decision regarding the jaguar and will not tolerate any harms done towards it.
A similar case occurred in August 2017, where a Russian man was brave enough to climb into an enclosure with three bears to give them milk. He lost a hand when his arm was bitten off close to the shoulder. Andrey Sakharovsky, who was apparently drunk, was recorded on CCTV after he ignored the warning signs on the caged enclosure and climbed over the fence into the pen. The caged enclosure sat in front of a café to entertain customers.
According to The Siberian Times, Sakharovsky was drunk and wanted to give the three bears, Masha, a five-year-old female, and males Misha and Sasha, aged four years, some cans of condensed milk. After Sakharovsky fell in and had his hand bitten off, a friend jumped in to help him; the café’s barbecue chef, Gabil Guseinov rushed over with a spade to fend off the bears.
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