[CAT] "Tiger at Calgary zoo that mauled intruder did nothing wrong: Keeper"

[rfmcdonald]

Poor kitty.

A Siberian tiger that brutally mauled a man Monday morning was only doing what comes naturally, say Calgary zoo officials.

"Vitali did nothing wrong. It's his natural behaviour. They broke into his home," said zookeeper Tim Sinclair-Smith later in the day.

Just after 1 a.m. local time Monday, a pair of 27-year-old men scaled the zoo's 2.4-metre-high fence near the west public gate.

Inside, they hopped another one-metre-high fence designed to keep the public at a safe distance from the Siberian tiger enclosure.

While the man was standing in front of a second fence that keeps the cats secure, a two-year-old male tiger named Vitali caught his arm through the wires, biting and swiping at him. The man's friend managed to free him and the pair scrambled to safety.

"I think it's fair to say that, if anybody puts their mind to it, they can breach any kind of security — and that certainly seems to be the case here," said the zoo's director, Grahame Newton.

[. . .]

Zookeepers say the tiger, "one of our most laid-back cats," was likely spooked by the intruders.

The cat, who showed signs of being stressed after the break-in, suffered no injuries to his paws or mouth and eventually calmed down.

"He's perfectly fine. A tiger is a carnivore, so they're going to behave naturally, and that's his natural reaction," said Sinclair-Smith.

The tiger was either acting out of aggression or protecting himself, said Dr. Sandie Black, the zoo's head vet.

"(The tiger) has a fairly significant armament at his disposal: very sharp claws. My guess would be that the gentleman was hooked by a claw and his arm dragged in and continued to be attacked from that point."