Physicist Calculates Trajectory of Tiger At SF Zoo 713
KentuckyFC writes "Is it really possible for a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away? (Said another way: a 159-kg tiger, a 3.8 m barrier, and 10 m away.) A physicist at Northeastern University has done the math, a straightforward problem in ballistics, and the answer turns out to be yes (abstract on the physics arXiv). But I guess we already knew that following the death of Carlos Souza at the paws of Tatiana, a Siberian Tiger he had allegedly been taunting at San Francisco zoo at the end of last year."
The zoo should know stuff like this. (Score:1, Insightful)
Call in the lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
Which begs the question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, climbing over the fence to deliberately provoke a large predator and whatnot... totally the zoo's fault.
the tiger had superior knowledge of the situation (Score:5, Insightful)
The tiger, obviously, disagreed with you. I submit that the tiger had better knowledge of the extent and degree of taunting that you do.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, if I saw a guy taunting animals at the zoo I'd think he was a complete jerk. If it was really out of hand, I'd call security to arrest the guy.
But it's not something he deserved to die for.
It is a good habit not to blame the victim of a crime. But no real crime occurred here. He was just the victim of an accident that he caused. This should be repeated in every story discussing this event as a warning to any other stupid individual who thinks taunting tigers is harmless.
Possibilities vs explanations (Score:5, Insightful)
If we already know the answer, then the question really is, can we explain how a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away, or do we need to do some more research?
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's a mitigating factor. The tiger didn't attack some random person, this guy was doing something to provoke the attack. That puts the attack in a different category. Both categories are bad in this case, but they are still different.
A well designed enclosure would have prevented this. The zoo is at fault. There is no question there.
However, the guy wasn't innocent. The tiger may not have attacked if he was behaving differently. There is a risk when you tease a 350lb killing machine. I see the fact he was doing that as important.
Your point is a bit like "sure he was kicking the dog, but that doesn't make it OK that the dog mauled him". Just because the result (mauling) was worse than the crime (kicking the dog) doesn't mean the crime is irrelevant.
Now teasing a tiger is not as bad as kicking a dog... the tiger isn't actually injured. The point is that the guy is not without blame.
If I had kids, I'd rather they heard this story with that fact, and would get the chance to learn the lesson "don't taunt things that can easily kill you, even if you think you're safe" than either never learn that lesson or learn it the hard way.
Lateral velocity != jumping velocity (Score:5, Insightful)
35 mi/hr across the ground != 26 mi/hr at a 55 deg angle. I'd like to see how they propose converted that lateral velocity to the highly inclined one.
This is high school physics done badly. Very poor analysis.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who "designed the enclosure"? It was (IIRC) a WPA project from the 1930's. It wasn't designed, it was built.
The crazy part was that the people who ran the zoo had no idea of its height, or lack thereof. And when inspectors came through the zoo a couple of years ago, nobody mentioned to the zoo that the height was below standard. In other words, it's not a design problem (the height was fine when it was built, back when nobody was stupid enough to taunt tigers like that), it's a maintenance problem, as in keeping up to standards, or even knowing that you aren't.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it's mostly about "jerks deserve to die" though. I think most of the reason people like to keep repeating it is it gives them a comforting thought that the world is under their control, and safe. We're safe from tigers as long as WE don't taunt them. This guy was the cause of the problem, so there's no real need to worry about tigers escaping from cages (ignoring the other two people who were mauled of course).
Of course, the cage wasn't tall enough, and the Zoo is obviously responsible for this mans death. I'll ignore the whole argument if we should have Zoos for Tigers in the first place.
Re:The sickest part about the tiger attack... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can blame the zoo and blame the human, but the the tiger was innocent - the tiger was the victim here. Do not loose sight of this fact.
Re:the tiger had superior knowledge of the situati (Score:5, Insightful)
Taunting a tiger is a bit like running down the street screaming the N word in Harlem: there are much, much safer ways to be a jackass.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are not going to the right zoos then.....
Re:There's more going on here (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A lot (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems clear to me that you build a tiger exhibit in a way that doesn't require the tiger's continued good will to keep it inside.
Re:Darwin award contender? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is saying he deserved to die. If you take risks with your life and the risk doesn't pay off.. well tough.
Re:A lot (Score:5, Insightful)
1) distract the cat from sleeping,
2) make it get up,
3) make it target you,
4) make it risk its own safety to jump out of its "den" to attack you,
5) make it actually attack, and
6) make it track you hundreds of feet past many other potential targets, now that it's free.
Re:A lot (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree. Most of us go through phases of being quite evil and pathetic, and also of being selfless and kind. Most of us are sometimes wretched, sometimes wonderful, and mostly in-between. As a parent, I have a deeper love for my kids than I ever would have expected prior to being a parent. I know they will be sometimes evil; one of my jobs is to minimize that. But I think it would be a tragic, albeit a just one, for most persons to die in this manner.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see. On an average day at the zoo, there are several thousand people who visit this enclosure. During all the years this enclosure has been around and has had a tiger of some sort in it, not one person has ever been attacked, let alone killed.
Then one day, after drinking and some drug use, [cnn.com] these asshats decide to stand on a fence around the enclosure, yell and taunt at a wild animal which is known to be able kill humans, possibly shoot it with a slingshot, and yet somehow, despite the actions of supposedly the smartest animal on the planet, it's not the guy's fault he got himself killed?
But it's not something he deserved to die for.
It's called being responsible for your actions. Put another way, survival of the fittest in all its glory.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe the thing that bothers most people, why they seem to imply that the guy got what was coming to him, is that the animal was behind bars and the guys were torturing it verbally and possibly with a slingshot [begin slingshot debate now]. Would the guy have done the same thing to a large breed dog he saw walking down the street? Probably not. But some vodka and an animal enclosure turns the guys into George of the Jungle.
When push comes to shove do most people think the guy really deserved death? No. But we're far enough removed from it to think about it like something we'd watch on TV instead of something that might happen to someone we know.
Strange side note:
The following is from a major news outlet regarding what the police did when they arrived on the scene only to find the tiger loose:
Nice work. I understand it's not something you deal with at the academy, but do you really think yelling "Stop" is going to have a major impact on the behavior of the tiger?
What about the tiger? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:1, Insightful)
Drunk kids should die more often, IMO. Either from tigers or BMW M5s. Keeps the gene pool cleaner.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of enclosure would you actually need to keep an enranged and adrenaline fueled tiger in though.
However, the guy wasn't innocent. The tiger may not have attacked if he was behaving differently. There is a risk when you tease a 350lb killing machine. I see the fact he was doing that as important.
The way all mammals respond to threats is known as "flight or flight". Predators are likely to tend towards the former. There are few things an adult tiger will run from.
Who cares!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Let the tiger kill 1 person, 100 people, 1000 people, it is a fucking TIGER people, not a bunny rabbit, it was born to do one thing only, KILL! DO NOT expect it to do anything else if its free, and sure as fuck don't kill it for doing so, tranquilize it for crying out loud. Any tiger left on the face of the planet is worth 1,000,000 times more than any human, they are endangered, WE ARE NOT.
Re:The SF Zoo? Hah! (Score:5, Insightful)
How so? The fence is the same height today it was when it was a public zoo. The zoo was public when the fence was built. Seems a better case can be made that public zoos don't know how to design safe tiger enclosures.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the tiger had superior knowledge of the situati (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the problem.
Re:Call in the lawyers (Score:1, Insightful)
A Rottweiler, a tall fence, and an 8 year old child.
Child taunts Rottweiler, and pokes it with a stick through the fence.
Enraged Rottweiler manages to scramble over fence and mauls child. Who's at fault?
Change child to 17 year old. Different?
Get him drunk. Different?
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and the fact that there was a giant depression going on and nobody gave a shit about some moron taunting a tiger.
Re:Who cares!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the guy 400 yards away with the high-powered rifle has the advantage. As was verified in this case.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Because in the case of tigers, it is a very real danger? At least, a tiger who eats a human (whether the tiger killed the human or simply ran across a body) is liable to start to see humans as food, and a tiger will hunt and kill anything it sees as food.
This tiger didn't actually eat anyone... but it wasn't killed due to the fear of it being a future man-eater, it was killed because it was in the process of mauling two people after having killed one already, and when the police distracted it the tiger ran at them. Ideally they could have used tranquilizers, but this wasn't a planned recovery mission, it was an emergency response. It's hard for me to fault the police for doing their job of protecting people and themselves with the tools they had on hand when they showed up.
I agree though that this is exceedingly tragic. It's a disaster as far as I'm concerned. And the fools who mis-constructed (and mis-certified) the enclosure, and the retards who lacked the common sense to not taunt a large predator, directly contributed. Is there any hope for these animals in the face of simple, common, everyday human stupidity?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent +5 Informative (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a valid public/private test case (Score:3, Insightful)
However the current management of the zoo has everything to do with the height of the wall, even though the wall was built before the management took charge, because the wall was built before safety standards were established.
If the safety standards were established after the current management took charge, the older management was to blame; if it took place after the current management took charge, then both the current management and the old management are to blame, because the incoming management should have checked everything before taking over. One way or the other, the current management is "at fault" here. The old management might not have been at fault, if it were not known that tigers could clear such a wall at the time.
In any case, this is not really a valid test case for privatization, because the zoo is run as a partnership between the SF Parks department and the non-profit SF Zoological Society. It is the difference between non-profit and for-profit here that is critical, not the difference between government and private.
A well run non-profit should make the decision to evaluate the safety of its exhibits and address any problems in exactly the same way a well run government institution would. Either should determine whether the exhibits meet standards of safety and either correct any deficiencies, or close the exhibit. A well run for-profit would look at the decision in a risk/benefit context.
In fact, a well run for-profit takes these uncertainties and makes them quantifiable by buying insurance. If the insurance company misses the problem with the tiger enclosure, that's all to the good: the company gets a windfall savings. If the insurance company catches the problem, then you've got a simple NPV calculation between the investment and the premium differential. Either way, you plug the numbers into a spreadsheet, and if the spreadsheet says you go on with an unsafe exhibit, you do.
So, net net net, as they say, you can't conclude anything about the difference between private and public management by this event. You can conclude something about this management, which is that in this case at least it didn't do its job. If this were a private, for profit company they might well have been managing "properly", by concluding the wall was "probably" safe, and the cost of fixing the situation was higher than the probable benefit.
Re:Never mind the physics (Score:2, Insightful)
If the tiger jumped the fence specifically to get to you it doesn't matter if you're near an olympic sprinter or somebody in a wheelchair pulling a baby carriage full of bricks. That tiger will be coming after you.
Perhaps that's why initial estimates were off. Did anybody take into account that a tiger doesn't try to jump that fence if the guy doens't annoy it? There have been tigers in that cage for how long before this happened? Reminds of how after the 35W bridge collapse the big story nationwide (and here in Minnesota long after) was how suddenly every friggin' bridge in the country was a ticking timebomb of death and destruction.
I've been to zoos where the monkey cages are designed in such a way that trees hang down over where people walk. However I've never seen or heard of a monkey at the zoo trying to escape via that tree. However I would guess that if I start egging on said monkey, or find some other reason to grab it's attention...it may suddenly become very interested in that overhanging branch.
Re:Darwin award contender? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, they're right.
Here's a list of other stuff (in case you weren't following all the articles) they did just that day;
- waited for the Zoo to empty out (premeditated)
- collected tools to do the task (slingshot, and something else (i forgot)
- drove drunk (open container of vodka in the car) to the zoo
- stayed around after zoo was closed (trespassing)
- climbed over a barrier designed to protect animals from humans
- lied to police about what happened
- clamed up, lawyered up right away
Those asshats deserved to die just from the drunk driving alone. Acting in such a way that causes an endangered animal to be killed brutally by police, while two of them (India-Indians) should know damn well what tigers can do, yeah, that pretty much adds up to NO sympathy.
These asshats deserved to die. Just like those asshats that drove off the end of the Travolta's runway deserved to die. The human race is better off without them.
This is not just kids fooling around tying cans to the neighbor's dogs tail. It's real, bona fide criminal activity and animal abuse.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:3, Insightful)
-- the citizens of Todos Santos
Re:A lot (Score:2, Insightful)
not to say your viewpoint isn't valid, just that i see it different.
Re:A lot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
The cop should have let the tiger just do what it wanted, until they could find a tranquilizer gun so they could get it back to the cage. As the other guy said, there's 6.5 billion people on the planet, and very few tigers. Tigers are endangered animals. People in a zoo should realize that wild animals are dangerous, and if they get out, it's them versus the animal. Humans shouldn't get any special rights against the animals when they knowingly put themselves in that situation.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
The way to deal with this is through the legal system. Let the animal do what it will, but figure out who caused the animal to become a mankiller unnaturally. Make that person responsible, even if they're dead. Any more deaths can be blamed on that person, and he has to pay wrongful death settlements, or if he was killed by the animal, his family has to pay.
Besides, let's be realistic here. This animal is in a zoo. Animals in zoos are supposed to be locked up so they can't physically escape and get to humans. If an animal is a mankiller, just put it back in its cage!!! and don't let it get out! How hard is that? Apparently, too hard for the SF Zoo which is too stupid to build a wall tall enough for a tiger, but again that needs to be dealt with, harshly, through the legal system by making those responsible pay for the damage, including the zoo director who apparently holds much of the blame.
Re:Very Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, I find that very interesting too. It pretty much proves to me that this was their own stupid fault. This was not some random man-killing tiger who escaped on a whim and hunted a human. This thing was pissed, it was out for revenge, and there's no way it was going to those lengths just because it was mildly annoyed. Out of all the visitors to ever walk past the cage, these were the only ones to taunt it in any way? Not bloody likely. They must have gone above and beyond the call of stupid duty to provoke this attack.
Re:So he taunted... why difference does it make? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, DIE. If you are stupid enough to taunt a large tiger, you deserve to die. It's that simple. Every other animal on earth is supposedly not as smart as a human, but they're all smart enough not to taunt large predators, because as small as their brains are, they know that it's a bad idea. So when a human does this, you think they deserve to live? Sorry, no. People that stupid have no business sharing space with the rest of us, or worse, reproducing and making similarly stupid kids. That level of stupidity is simply inexcusable.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, most folks believe that human life is more important than animal life, so when a police officer arrives to find a "rare" tiger mauling a "common" human, you can't be surprised when he opts to kill kill the freaking cat. The suggestion that the lives of a few humans should be willfully sacrificed to preserve the life of an animal flies against our built-in desire to preserve our race, so don't expect to be popular when you make it.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't tell me you, at 17, (or one of your friends) never did something silly without thinking it through. These guys could have been decent people besides this one bit of silliness (for that is all it was - they had not murdered anyone and thus it could be said they deserved to die). As for stupidity, I doubt they would have believed that the tiger would be able, or even sufficiently bothered enough, to jump over the fence and kill them.
Again people do stupid things every day, especially teenagers, it doesn't mean they deserve to die.
I appreciate (from the sounds of it) you don't support zoos (nor do I for simple entertainment purposes) but that doesn't justify any of your statements which are, to be frank, moronic.
Re:Very Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:haha (Score:3, Insightful)
see, yelling and making yourself larger usually repels predators.
See, tigers are apex predators, very efficient killing machines at the top of the food chain. Tigers are also known to be very territorial. Now, standing and shouting in the full view of the tiger is dominance behaviour, especially if you're looking straight at it. What do you think the natural reaction of a tiger to an invasion of its territory by a creature showing dominant behaviour is going to be?
Note also that most stories of wild tigers attacking humans are in the context of human settlements encroaching upon tiger territory.
So yes, yelling and making yourself larger is taunting in the context of tiger behaviour.
Side note: when a Dutch woman taunted a gorilla and it went on a rampage, the animal was tranquilised and put back in its enclosure, even after mauling several unrelated bystanders. Somehow the shooting of Tatiana does not a lot to dispel the image of Americans as a bunch of trigger-happy rednecks.
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