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Department of Human Rationality
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, police found a shoe and blood in an area between the gate and the edge of the animal's 25- to 30-foot-wide moat, raising the possibility that one of the victims dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of the moat...
One zoo official insisted the tiger did not get out through an open door and must have climbed or leaped out. But Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo, said such a leap would be an unbelievable feat and ''virtually impossible.''
Instead, he speculated that visitors could have been fooling around and might have taunted the animal and perhaps even helped it get out by, say, putting a board in the moat.
Ron Magill, a spokesman at the Miami Metro Zoo, said it was unlikely a zoo tiger could make such a leap, even with a running start.
The story is here. And I agree with what Robin Hanson is probably thinking: it was signaling behavior. Maybe from the tiger too.
Update: Here is one story, here is more, some of you rail in the comments but the initial interpretation is looking correct. Note also that the tiger, after killing the first boy, went 300 yards to track down the other two boys and not anyone else.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 27, 2007 at 04:45 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
I agree, especially regarding the tiger's perspective. Here is a similar story happened in China -- when a boy and a drunk man tried to signal friendship, a giant panda signaled them back that he is not really huggable material http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3763362.
Too bad, in the SF case, we have no clue what the eaten guy was up to.
Posted by: Yan Li at Dec 27, 2007 5:37:03 PM
It's no 25-30 feet, but here is a unique perspective on the jumping ability of a tiger:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4FWjxN-vcts
Posted by: elambend at Dec 27, 2007 5:47:23 PM
I love the newspaper headline -- Zoo Director says Tiger Wall was too low -- seems like most of the experts say that the zoo wall was fine and that the kids taunting the tiger may have caused this. This headline gives a completely different meaning than a headline of "Tiger attack victims may have aided in the attac" Yet the Times chose the headline that would imply negligence on the Zoo's part...which is too bad. Even the Times is resorting to misleading headlines.
Posted by: Brent at Dec 27, 2007 5:50:16 PM
Assuming that the tiger leapt out of the enclosure because it was being taunted, and assuming that I'm interpreting Tyler's headline properly, is it really irrational to taunt an animal if you've been led to believe that the animal is incapable of getting out of its enclosure? It may be mean spirited and childish, but is it irrational?
Posted by: jp at Dec 27, 2007 6:28:29 PM
I went to the SF zoo and saw the tiger with my kids last Sunday.
Instead, he speculated that visitors could have been fooling around and might have taunted the animal and perhaps even helped it get out by, say, putting a board in the moat.
Maybe a board made of ice which would explain why no board was found in the moat. It melted!
Posted by: Lemmy Caution at Dec 27, 2007 6:44:57 PM
From the perspective of moral culpability, it matters whether the victims were taunting the tiger, but from the perspective of zoo safety, it's entirely irrelevent.
If the only thing standing between visitors and a mauling is 1m of dangling leg and a more-pissed-off-than-usual tiger, the enclosure is not safe. The wall should be high enough and the moat wide enough that each is independently insurmountable by a tiger, with a good 20% margin of error. For this to happen, the victim should have to climb over an alarmed barrier, throw a board into the moat, and lower himself half-way down the wall with a rope. It would be good to have the entire scene should be under recorded video surveillance, too.
Posted by: David Wright at Dec 27, 2007 7:12:17 PM
Tatiana has a history:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/23/TIGER.TMP
Posted by: Steve Miller at Dec 27, 2007 7:13:24 PM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/27/MNFFU5G80.DTL&tsp=1
Tiger Wall Was Too Low
S.F. Zoo officials admit that the 12-1/2-foot-high enclosure is 4 feet below accepted standards.
Posted by: Hank at Dec 27, 2007 7:28:59 PM
Maybe a board made of ice which would explain why no board was found in the moat. It melted!
You've been reading too many "locked room" mysteries.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Dec 27, 2007 7:37:04 PM
Hindsight is 20/20. *Now* you say the wall is too low. The official Steve Miller recommendation is a 40-ft wall with a 50-ft moat full of sharks with laser beams on their heads.
Posted by: Steve Miller at Dec 27, 2007 7:41:28 PM
Can't tigers swim?
Posted by: DK at Dec 27, 2007 8:11:25 PM
"Can't tigers swim?"
Yes, but they need a solid surface to push off of, if they want to jump over a 12-foot wall.
Posted by: Joe Grossberg at Dec 27, 2007 8:49:29 PM
"If the only thing standing between visitors and a mauling is 1m of dangling leg and a more-pissed-off-than-usual tiger, the enclosure is not safe."
And if the only thing standing between my car and the drunk driving right at me is a double yellow line, the road is not safe either!
Posted by: Jay at Dec 27, 2007 8:49:59 PM
And if the only thing standing between my car and the drunk driving right at me is a double yellow line, the road is not safe either!
Exactly. That is precisely why driving should be much more strictly regulated. It would make sense to allow people to drive to work and an occasional vacation (as a reward perhaps for a clean driving record). They could apply for a permit which would specify the routes they are allowed to drive (e.g. work M-F, store on the weekend, to the coast and back at the end of the month, etc) and how many miles they're allowed. Then this would all be programmed into the police database. That would allow police with those new automatic license plate reading cameras which can scan 5 or 6 lanes of traffic at once, to easily check to make sure that every car on the road is on the prescribed route and at the prescribed time. Eventually cars could have an easily downloadable program from a cell tower or whatever which would tell its computer when and where it is allowed to be driven and any attempt to operate it outside of the acceptable times would automatically alert the police. This plan would virtually wipe out drunk driving and could easily save almost all of the 40,000 people killed by cars a year. Beyond that it would save vast amounts of energy while drastically reducing greenhouse gasses. It's so much better for society on so many fronts and nobody is hurt since you can still drive to all the things you really NEED to drive to, that I can't believe we haven't done something like this yet. If we have to have prescriptions to get medicines that are far less dangerous than driving I don't see why we can't have a similar "prescription" plan for when you can drive.
Posted by: concerned citizen at Dec 27, 2007 10:14:01 PM
Even supposing this fanciful theory was right, it would be a grossly negligent design. A mere 10% margin of error between safety and catastrophic failure? (Do the math: the length of a human leg is about 3 feet, compared to a reported total distance of 25-30 feet). No engineer responsible for such a design could keep their job -- or career.
In any case, the leg-dangling theory falls apart immediately. The tiger weighed 350 pounds!. If it latched onto the victim's foot with its teeth (hence the shoe), the victim would have been yanked down into the moat immediately by gravity. Not even Olympic weightlifting champions could keep from falling over sideways if you attached an asymmetric 350-pound weight to one side of their body.
And then there's some magical board? A board that would have to be at least 20 feet long and able to support the weight of a 350 lb tiger, yet could be carried by a person and smuggled past the turnstiles at the zoo entrance without anybody noticing. And it vanishes after being used. Maybe the tiger ate it.
The whole thing is preposterous on its face. It stinks to high heaven of some weasel lawyer trying to use the media to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of future prospective jury members through the media.
Tyler, I'm disappointed you didn't take the time to think this through and merely used the story as a hook for a banal comment about signaling.
Posted by: at Dec 27, 2007 10:14:28 PM
Jay: The providers of streets make no promise that their product will protect its users against drunk drivers (although the many more modern streets do use jersey barriers and other median dividers to reduce such risks). Their customers knowingly accept that risk. I suspect you would agree that the providers of zoos do make at least an implicit promise that their product will protect its users from the zoo's animals. Their customers do not knowingly accept the risk of being eaten by escaped tigers. It would appear that the engineers at this zoo need to do some work at keeping up their end of the bargin.
Posted by: David Wright at Dec 27, 2007 11:01:14 PM
People value life TOO much these days; especially in the US. Assuming this is a freak accident I think one person dead from the millions who visit and enjoy zoos each year is just " acceptable cost of business" to me.
Mourn it, and get on with life!
The cost of eliminating dangers with a 100% certainty is WAY too high. It's time this was gently impressed upon people. For reasons that go far beyond zoo-safety.
Posted by: Raul at Dec 28, 2007 2:34:29 AM
And even more stupidity here by Adam M. Roberts:
http://news.google.com/news?btcid=b96633715cb6e1ab
Unbelievably naive and that's the sort of analysis that does more harm than good especially when backed by an aura of questionable authority.
Posted by: anon at Dec 28, 2007 2:43:14 AM
This post is too close to a Darwin Award (lets poke fun at people who died in a freakish, unintelligent manner).
At this stage, it doesn't seem right for commentators with little information to irresponsibly blame someone who can't speak for himself.
Posted by: thehova at Dec 28, 2007 3:02:01 AM
"According to the San Francisco Chronicle, police found a shoe and blood in an area between the gate and the edge of the animal's 25- to 30-foot-wide moat"
The shoe part is false, according to a more recent LA Times article:
"Contrary to published reports, Police Chief Heather Fong said police had no information to suggest that any of those who were attacked dangled a leg or other body part over the sheer wall, perhaps making it easier for the tiger to climb out.
She said that the police found a shoeprint on the railing of a low fence that separates the grotto from the visitor walkway and that police are trying to determine whether the print matches any of the shoes of the three victims. But she denied published reports that a shoe was found beyond the fence, inside the enclosure."
I'm disgusted by this whole blame the victim episode.
And since when are Jack Hanna and the spokesman for the Miami Zoo experts on tiger behavior?
Posted by: thehova at Dec 28, 2007 3:16:58 AM
The thing that I don't understand is, who knows for sure what the absolute maximum amount a tiger can jump? And how exactly do they know this for sure? Is there a tiger combine?
If it's just some guy in a zoo dangling food up high and see how high the tiger will jump to get it, that doesn't necessarily provide the answer, because there's going to be a big difference between that and how high it jumps when it's angry, full of tiger adrenalin, and desperate to get out. I wouldn't be surprised if no one (currently alive) has actually seen a tiger jump as high as it possibly can under all circumstances.
I've heard different reports about how high the wall really is, and I've heard that the moat is a dry moat. Maybe this was just the Michael Jordan of lady tigers, and no one really knew how high the wall needs to be until we just found out?
Posted by: BillWallace at Dec 28, 2007 3:41:53 AM
Bill: While you are undoubtedly correct in strict epistimological terms, in practical terms one would expect that we have enough collective experience with tigers that we are now just adjusting the digits after the decimal point. In any case, this incident does not define a new maximum, because, as the zoo has now admitted, their wall was 4' shorter than the previously observed maximum.
Posted by: David Wright at Dec 28, 2007 4:57:15 AM
"Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry."
Posted by: meter at Dec 28, 2007 9:17:45 AM
six sigma happens
Posted by: Andrew at Dec 28, 2007 9:52:00 AM
Jim Corbett, in one of his "Man-Eaters of Kumaon" stories, tells of building a gun platform high up in a tree to lay in wait for a man-eating tiger. In the middle of the night the tiger came and started jumping up to the platform, trying to get at Corbett. He got a claw onto the platform but couldn't pull it down. After shooting the tiger, Corbett measured the height of the platform from the ground at over 18 feet.
Posted by: Robert Speirs at Dec 28, 2007 10:49:02 AM
