Two days after a tiger killed a teenager at the San Francisco Zoo, the zoo director has acknowledged that a wall enclosing the animal was 3.8 metres high, well below the height recommended by the main accrediting agency for the nation's zoos.
San Francisco Zoo director Manuel Mollinedo discusses a Christmas Day tiger attack during a press conference on Thursday.
(Noah Berger/Associated Press)
According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the minimum recommended height for tiger exhibit walls is 4.9 metres.
Zoo director Manuel Mollinedo said Thursday that safety inspectors had examined the wall and never raised red flags about its size.
"When the AZA came out and inspected our zoo three years ago, they never noted that as a deficiency," Mollinedo said. "Obviously now that something's happened, we're going to be revisiting the actual height."
On Wednesday, Mollinedo said that the wall was 5.4 metres high, and that the moat around the tiger's pen was six metres wide.
Tatiana, a Siberian tiger, killed a teenage boy and mauled two others before police shot her on Christmas Day.
(San Francisco Zoo/Associated Press)
Investigators have yet to say how the tiger got out of the pen, but based on Mollinedo's initial estimate of the height of the wall, animal experts expressed disbelief that a tiger in captivity could make such a leap.
The female Siberian tiger, Tatiana, who last year attacked a zookeeper, escaped on Christmas Day, killing the teen and mauling two others before police shot and killed her.
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