In Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, an Indian teenager survives a shipwreck to find himself sharing a lifeboat with a 204kg Bengal tiger. He quickly realizes that he must tame the tiger or be killed by it. And slowly, boy and tiger carve out a peaceful nautical existence.
In real life, wildlife experts said Monday, close relationships between humans and big cats often end less happily, as they did twice last week, on a Las Vegas stage and in a New York City apartment.
In Las Vegas, Roy Horn of the illusionist team Siegfried & Roy was severely mauled by a 272kg white tiger during a show at the Mirage Hotel on Friday night.
On Saturday, officials in New York removed a large tiger from an apartment in Harlem. The authorities were alerted to the animal's presence after its owner, Antoine Yates, reported to a hospital with animal bites that he told doctors were inflicted by a pit bull.
Given the large number of tigers and other wild cats that are privately owned in the US, the experts said, such attacks are inevitable, and it is surprising only that they do not occur more frequently.
"This is the tip of the iceberg," said Jim Breheny, associate general curator for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo.
"There are thousands of cases like this that don't get this notoriety," he said.
At least as many tigers are privately owned in this country as exist in the wild, the experts said.
Only about 5,000 tigers, repre-senting five subspecies -- all endangered -- still roam freely in India, Myanmar, Malaysia, China, Russia and other countries. By contrast, John Seidensticker, a senior scientist at the National Zoo in Washington, estimated that more than 5,000 and perhaps as many as 10,000 tigers belong to private individuals or groups.
Many are bought as cubs through dealers who sell over the Internet or in advertisements placed in magazines. Some are owned by circuses or other entertainment ventures. About 1,100 tigers are raised in carefully monitored breeding programs at zoos.
No federal law bans the private ownership of tigers or other exotic cats, according to the federal Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. State and local laws governing the ownership of wild animals vary from region to region.
But to exhibit the animals publicly, an owner must apply for a license from the US Department of Agriculture. The agency requires that the owner provide a veterinary care program and sets standards for nutrition, housing, sanitation and transportation.
People who adopt wild cats often seem oblivious to the fact that the cute cubs who bottle-feed in their arms will soon grow into creatures that can crush the neck vertebrae of wild pigs with one bite.
"What they evolved for is killing things," Seidensticker said. "They are killing machines."
When wild cats do lash out, they often end up like Yates' tiger, who, after being removed from the apartment, was sent to a wildlife sanctuary in Ohio. Tigers can live up to 18 years, Breheny said, and once abandoned by their owners or removed from them, they often face uncertain futures.
The injuries a tiger inflicts are often serious.
"You don't have a second chance with a tiger," Breheny said. "They don't go for the arm or the leg, they go for the throat or the head."
Attacks by tigers are more common than most people realize, said Philip Nyhus, a professor of environmental studies at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
In a study to appear in December in the journal Zoobiology, Nyhus found that seven people had been killed by tigers in the US from 1998 to 2001, and 27 people had been injured severely enough to require hospitalization. In comparison, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 to 25 people are killed by dogs each year.
Even seasoned professionals like Horn, who was attacked while on stage alone with the tiger and is still in critical condition in a Las Vegas hospital, are never entirely out of danger.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS