Man Mauled by Pet Tiger — Film at 11

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-10-07 01:14am

Pet Tiger to Live at Ohio Sanctuary

NEW YORK (AP) - A pet tiger rescued from a Manhattan apartment after biting its owner will have a new home at an Ohio sanctuary with plenty of grass, trees and birds.

An alligator also recovered from the apartment was to be sent to an Indiana preserve, while their owner recovered from wounds from the 400-pound cat.

Antoine Yates, 31, was released from a hospital Monday night in Philadelphia, where he had fled. Police took him back to New York City to face reckless endangerment charges.

Yates told reporters after his arrival that he had the animals in his apartment because he wanted ``to show the whole world that we all can get along.''

``It wasn't about he was a side show or a pet or nothing,'' Yates said of the tiger.

He said the tiger, which was ``like my brother,'' had grabbed him and ripped the flesh on his leg down to the bone.

``My leg is not the problem,'' he said. ``It's my heart.''

A veterinarian examined the tiger Monday at Noah's Lost Ark preserve in Berlin Center, Ohio, 15 miles west of Youngstown. The licensed facility takes abused and neglected exotic animals and warns that wild animals can't be tamed.

``We should just stop letting people buy them,'' preserve director Ellen Whitehouse said. ``We shouldn't be breeding them in the United States.''

A team of animal control officers, police and Bronx Zoo workers used a camera to track the animals in Yates' fifth-floor apartment in a Harlem housing project before tranquilizing and removing them Saturday.

Wes Artope, director of the city's animal shelters, said the tiger, an orange and white Siberian-Bengal mix, had been kept in the apartment since he was a 6-week-old cub. The 20-month-old tiger now weighs at least 425 pounds, Artope said.

The tiger and 5-foot alligator, both in good condition, were taken first to a local shelter, then to a Long Island animal sanctuary before authorities sought homes.

``Clearly this tiger should not have been in any place in New York City outside of a zoo,'' Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sunday.

On the Net:

http://www.noahslostark.com

CNN link

So... what was this tiger's stress problem? Trouble at the office? Financial worries? A serious need to switch to decaf?

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-10-07 01:21am

I think his owner touches himself at night.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-10-07 01:50am

Patrick Degan wrote: So... what was this tiger's stress problem? Trouble at the office? Financial worries? A serious need to switch to decaf?

OMFG, you are never going to let Comical Axi live that down

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-10-07 02:12am

Why should anyone let him live it down? The guy actually posted on this board that the emotional stress of loud noises might cause a tiger to permanently lose its supposedly natural inhibitions against biting humans! That's not the sort of thing that people forget about easily.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-10-07 03:05am

What kind of moron keeps a 425 pound carnivorous wild animal in an apartment in the first place? Better yet, what kind of moron neighbors let it go on for so long?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-10-07 03:22am

beyond hope wrote:What kind of moron keeps a 425 pound carnivorous wild animal in an apartment in the first place?

A stupid one who thinks that all of that "tigers are deadly predators" stuff is just propaganda. I'm sure he and Axis would get along beautifully.

Better yet, what kind of moron neighbors let it go on for so long?

They might not have had much choice. If he was not breaking the law (and I'm not sure about the laws in those parts), then it would be useless to go to the authorities, and it's not as if one of them is going to go to the apartment and evict the tiger himself.

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2003-10-07 03:30am

*only slightly related* For those who care, I heartily recommend Yann Martel's 'Life of Pi', it's a great read, loosely about this sort of thing, and left me with many questions... *end of off topic bit*

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-10-07 03:41am

Darth Wong wrote:
beyond hope wrote:What kind of moron keeps a 425 pound carnivorous wild animal in an apartment in the first place?
A stupid one who thinks that all of that "tigers are deadly predators" stuff is just propaganda. I'm sure he and Axis would get along beautifully.

They could share adjoining beds in hospital talking about the poor tiger's stress-level and which limb is easier to get along without.

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-10-07 03:58am

``We should just stop letting people buy them,'' preserve director Ellen Whitehouse said. ``We shouldn't be breeding them in the United States.''

No, really?

~ver

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 2003-10-07 04:39am

beyond hope wrote:What kind of moron keeps a 425 pound carnivorous wild animal in an apartment in the first place? Better yet, what kind of moron neighbors let it go on for so long?

I saw them interviewing the neighbors on the news the other night, they were the ones who informed police about the tiger after they came to investigate the attack. They even had an little old lady say "Wont somebody please think of the children."

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-10-07 05:26am

I'm not sure what the law is there either but when I was temping for Baltimore County animal control, you had to have an exotic wildlife permit to have something like that. Aside from that, I think a tiger would also fall under whatever the federal regulations are on having an endangered species (two, actually, counting the gator.) I'm not entirely sure: the most exotic animal they'd ever dealt with in the county was an ocelot IIRC. (here for those who are saying "what's an ocelot?" - they're popular right now because they're exotic but relatively small.) I'd also love to know how this man was affording to keep a tiger and an alligator fed, and yet was living in a housing project.

I know I'm being harsh in my judgement of the neighbors: in all fairness to them, they may have called before the tiger bit him and it may have been dismissed as a prank call. I know my first reaction would have been to say "C'mon... your neighbor has a tiger? Get real."

My uncle is a vet: he's had some strange critters come through his clinic, including a bald eagle and several species of owl. They had a young cougar at one point, too... I forget the details on why. Anyway, the thing was pretty tame and they actually let it out in the clinic and also their adjoining house for exercise. That ended one day when the cougar got a little over-exhuberant: it knocked one of my cousins down while he had it in the living room and put its jaws around his throat. Now that cat was just playing (it didn't break the skin,) but he could easily have been dead.

(and yes, the obvious implication would be that the sort of morons who let big cats roam around in their living areas are genetically related to me.)

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2003-10-07 06:16am

Jesus what is it about Tigers these past few weeks, first Iraqi Zoo, then Sig. and Roy, now the Bronx. Could it be that the tigers are rising? Maybe Douglas Adams got it wrong and it's Tigers, not mice running the show...

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-10-07 06:51am

BoredShirtless wrote:Jesus what is it about Tigers these past few weeks, first Iraqi Zoo, then Sig. and Roy, now the Bronx. Could it be that the tigers are rising? Maybe Douglas Adams got it wrong and it's Tigers, not mice running the show...

It's probably a slow week for news, like that "year of the shark" stuff where the bite stories were all over the news despite it being a below-average year in number of bites.

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-10-07 07:10am

This is why we need to regulate the human population on this planet.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-10-07 07:12am

This is a mere prelude to the coming storm...

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-10-07 07:42am

beyond hope wrote:
It's probably a slow week for news, like that "year of the shark" stuff where the bite stories were all over the news despite it being a below-average year in number of bites.

Were those sharks suffering from stress?

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-10-07 08:03am

Vympel wrote:
Were those sharks suffering from stress?

I'm sure we could cock up some bullshit based on USN sonar testing. If it annoys whales it ought to get to the Sharks..

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2003-10-07 10:14am

Hope he gets better but c'mon I got scratches from my poor kitty.

Given that this variety is many times larger and stronger then me....and it has much more vicous tendancies. Can't feel too bad for the schmuck who owned it.

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2003-10-07 11:56am

An animal confined to an apartment that its owner cannot enter and fed with frozen chickens isn't exactly living the "fine life". If you can't see any stressors here, it's willful ignorance.

And once again, Wong attempts desperately to make a strawman of my original argument. For the last time: stress makes the effects of the attack worse.

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-10-07 12:04pm

Axis Kast wrote:An animal confined to an apartment that its owner cannot enter and fed with frozen chickens isn't exactly living the "fine life". If you can't see any stressors here, it's willful ignorance.

And once again, Wong attempts desperately to make a strawman of my original argument. For the last time: stress makes the effects of the attack worse.

Lol, so if the Tiger wasn't stressed, it wouldn't have mauled the person in question as badly? It's a predator, you retard. That's what predators do.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-10-07 12:05pm

This is the third tiger attack story in a period of a few weeks. Is this some new trend catching on?

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-10-07 12:05pm

Darth Servo wrote:This is the third tiger attack story in a period of a few weeks. Is this some new trend catching on?

Yes, what happened was the entire media read Axis Kast's bizarre tiger arguments and laughed so hard they just had to embarass him at every turn.

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2003-10-07 12:08pm

Axis, would you please summarise your original argument in a sentance or two?

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2003-10-07 12:19pm

Lol, so if the Tiger wasn't stressed, it wouldn't have mauled the person in question as badly? It's a predator, you retard. That's what predators do.

Strawman. Do you actually pay any fucking attention at all?

Axis, would you please summarise your original argument in a sentance or two?

Most large institutions that deal with wild, predatory animals (Yellowstone National Park is the prime example) do so only after taking stress into account after aggressive behavior.

As the reasoning goes - and this is the jist of my argument -, an animal under is a stress is an animal whose psychological aversion to striking humans or displaying frequent aggression is erroded. This was clearly the case in the example of the tiger that attacked Roy Horn (for that animal would not have been working with him on stage had it not had contact with him - free of incident - in training some time in the past). As Symetry noted on the other board, tigers in the wild don't usually select human prey unless other factors - in the cases he cites, poor dental composition - compel them to do so. Worse - and this came from somebody else -, the man attacked at the Baghdad zoo had food in hand, which the tiger may now link more closely to human beings.

In the case of this "apartment tiger" - whose individual room, apparently, the man was unable to enter -, stress was a clear problem.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-10-07 12:29pm

Axis Kast wrote:As the reasoning goes - and this is the jist of my argument -, an animal under is a stress is an animal whose psychological aversion to striking humans or displaying frequent aggression is erroded.

The problem is that you have NOT shown that tigers have a "psychological aversion to striking humans".

As Symetry noted on the other board, tigers in the wild don't usually select human prey unless other factors - in the cases he cites, poor dental composition - compel them to do so.

Also because (unlike you) most humans are smart enough to know that tigers are dangerous and stay away from them.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Man Mauled by Pet Tiger — Film at 11

Man Mauled by Pet Tiger — Film at 11

Re: Man Mauled by Pet Tiger — Film at 11