A zoo worker at Novosibirsk zoo in Russia has been killed after entering a jaguar enclosure Black Jaguar Tears Keeper to Pieces at Russian Zoo | Russia | RIA Novosti
The title of the article Is a bit disrespectful to the keeper and family. Thoughts go to her family and friends
This happens every year in many zoos. The staff should get adequate training before working with dangerous animals! In that case, the encosure was not secured. If a zoo saves money on training its keepers, they'll ultimately get injured or killed, or even eaten.
I don't know how it was in this case, but I'm afraid that significant number of such cases are associated with routine operations, when sooner or later the man acts out of habit, though something has changed. Or maybe there is sometimes distraction, fatigue, etc.
Must say that in Novosibirsk zoo the safety rules were often broken before by staff. Due to unwise construction of some enclosures or just because of laziness to train animals for routine procedures such as being locked during cleanup, the keepers work with some dangerous animals in free contact. One novice carnivore keeper while being 'trained' by 'experienced' keeper (who dominated the wolves and viewed FC as normal) was injured by wolf as soon as they entered the exhibit. Naturally she wasn't accepted for work after such 'fail', with no compensation and ripped neck. Or there was a case when keepers fed a sick snow leopard by literally crawling into the animal's shelter while it was inside!!! No manual feeding - just change the food bowls!!! Capture and moving to adequate enclosure for treatment was possible, but 'too complicated' - why bothering when a more dangerous way is a more simple one? No wonder that one day someone of naked apes was eaten
