Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/21/tiger-sneaks-up-on-man-at-zoo.html
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It’s not a zoo. That’s Mike the Tiger on the campus of LSU.
Also, they’re asking people to not provoke him into doing this as he may injure himself. LSU Vet School urges visitors to obey rules around Mike VII’s habitat
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FFS, maybe they shouldn’t keep a mascot tiger in the first place?
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I love watching cats cat. Big or small, they all exhibit the same grace and stealth that put them at the top of the food chain.
That said, it looked to me like he knew what would happen and enjoys making the monkeys jump.
Also
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Never turn your back on a big cat.
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I am taking the kiddo to a big cat sanctuary this weekend.
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I once went to a zoo that had a Sea Eagle on display. A little girl asked “Daddy, how do we make it look over here?”
Tired Dad said “Pretend you’re a fish.”
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No! kitty not hurt!
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The tiger wasn’t sneaking up on the guy shown in the video, it was trying to get close enough to kill the idiot shooting video in vertical format.
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What a bunch of assholes. “Don’t move?” How about don’t antagonize dangerous wildlife being held in captivity?
Don’t even get me started on the lack of ethics and just inhumane stupidity involving having an endangered species animal as “a mascot” living on a college campus.
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Can somebody edit these together?
(Edit: I never realized how much John Williams owes Igor Stravinski.)
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where’s Harry Potter when you need him.
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Videos like these make me very thankful that humans sneaked their way out of the food chain.
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On a visit to the San Diego Zoo, my cousin tried to get me to ignore rule number 1 so that he could take a picture. The lion had a “scratching post” that looked like a tree at the end it couldn’t reach. The rest was whittled down from deep claw marks I’ll never forget. At a certain angle I could see there was a pit between visitors and the lion, but there was no way I would turn around for a photo.
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A couple facts:
- “Mike” is a rescue tiger that was illegally bred in captivity. They can’t “release him”, he’d die in the wild.
- He’s the 7th “Mike”. Since III they’ve all been donated rescue tigers that needed a home.
- Mike allows vets to learn from his care, and perform research. Big cats aren’t plentiful and live training on how to care for them is an important way for budding vets to learn
- the previous Mike’s all lived to approximately 2x their natural lifespan
As a caretaker of four cats I am both appaled by the current state of feline care for rare diseases and lack of understanding of their base instinctual needs, as well as the terrible mistreatment of big cats by both poachers in the wild and illegal breeders.
I applaud the work of these facilities to advance the understanding around these noble species, and truly hope that some of their research can help us keep more of them alive in the wild going forward.
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This video makes me want to scream “Run! Run!”. Do you really trust that glass barrier?
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I once watched - from the far side of an enclosure, and with rapidly mounting alarm, and then with rapidly moving legs - as a lioness did this to my kids (who were aged about 3 and 4 at the time)
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Totally. It looks like he’s done it million times and never tires of it. Gotta get your chuckles where you find them. Any cat owner knows they have a sadistic sense of humor. We had a cat that simply wouldn’t let the submissive (and bigger) cat past him without a wack. They could stand on opposite sides of the doorway forever.
Didn’t we just have an article saying there’s like 7k captive tigers in the US alone?
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These violent delights have violent ends.
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It is leading to a proliferation of idiots though.
