Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Amur Tiger Attack - SF Zoo Chaos

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

On Christmas day in 2007, the Amur Tiger Tatiana leapt from her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked 3 young friends. Wes talks Jeff and Mike through the chaos, which ended very poorly for almost everyone involved. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to over 30 exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Welcome to episode two of our podcast, Tooth and Claw, where Wes, Jeff and I, my name is Mike, by the way, talk about wild animal attacks. This week we talk about the Amur Tiger, more commonly known maybe as the Siberian tiger.

Wes wanted to make sure we slipped that bit of info in there at the top, and that'll probably be the last educational thing I'll be saying today. Wes, on the other hand, will be a lot more informative in telling you the story of a tiger breakout that happened at the San Francisco Zoo, and the violent and surprisingly chaotic aftermath that ensued. We also do want to mention that we did record this several months ago, just as COVID-19 was starting to shut everything down, just to give a frame of reference around any events or dates that are discussed outside of the story itself. Again, since we're a newer podcast, every single person who rates and reviews tooth and claw favorably makes a huge difference. So if you wouldn't mind taking a quick second to do that for us, we would be forever grateful. Thank you.

All right, let's get into episode two on the Amur Tiger. So we're back. It's been a little bit of a break. Yeah. Not too much has changed since last time. We're all exactly the same. There's no, nothing different. Yeah.

No, we are, we're in the middle of quarantine for COVID-19. The three of us are quarantined together. So here we are. What's the most bored thing you guys have done during quarantine? bored? Like I did a puzzle that I've already done

which felt pretty boring They can't top that I was just going to go At the standard Like I watched two seasons of a show consecutively without taking a break Yeah

Without taking a I mean it was Ozark So it was like 10 episodes I'm in that right now It's pretty good 20 consecutive hours Is a lot of hours Those episodes aren't short

Yeah I it's like it's a very dark and depressing show too and I thought it would make me more depressed during all this COVID thing but it actually kind of made me feel like man my life could be a lot worse cool how about you Jeff what's the most boring thing you've done well like my most fun idea I had while I was bored was probably having you feed me lunch down railing on our stairs yeah we slid we slid like a full meal down the railing of the stairs into Jeff Jeff's face. So like the noodle shoot that they have in Japan, you know, where they like some the little chill. Yeah. But we just did it down the banister. Yeah.

Like sandwich, apple. It didn't fall off? No. No. The apple came in really fast. I thought it broke my nose. Yeah. Anyway.

So yeah, we've been keeping busy, obviously. We today are going to be doing the second podcast of tooth and quality. Yeah, that's what I called this thing. Still fluid. Yeah, that's still fluid. So if anyone out there has a better idea what to call this, we'll take it. But we like tooth and cloth for now. Yeah, what else is going on?

It's pretty weird time for everyone. One thing that's been weird for me as a wildlife expert is all these different fake stories that have been coming up about wildlife is flourishing and every, like nature's returning. There's one of like the Venice canals are clear and it was actually a different part of some different canals. And then I just read one that was the bear population in Yosemite is quadrupled. And it's like, oh, so in a month, the bears have had four times the offspring that they typically have, you know, their gestation periods, eight months, but they're actually just going to

have, you know, quadruple their population on month. And, and like, if you read the article, it kind of explained that they just meant they've been seeing a lot more bears. But anyway, there's been a lot of that stuff out there that's been pretty annoying. That's, that's old crabby, old crabby West. complaining about the fluff pieces on the news. Well, speaking of crabs, what are we talking about today? We're talking about tigers today. Yeah, I guess we might as well launch into this.

So today we're going to talk about Siberian tigers. So where do you find these Siberian tigers? You actually find them in far east Russia, just north of North Korea, and just to the east of China. So there's like a little strip of Russia that kind of comes down. Siberia, is you talking about? No, it's not Siberia. So they used to live in Siberia. It's tricky.

It's tricky. They used to live in like Mongolia, Siberia, all these different places, but now their range has been drastically reduced and they're only in the far eastern little strip of Russia that again is like just north of North Korea. None in North Korea? No. And there's a few in China. But if their population does expand, they'll probably expand in North Korea.

Really? Yeah. My dog Bryce is here too. You guys may hear her a little bit. We'll try to get a riled up for you. Feeder some French fries. Yeah, so that's where they're at right now. There's about 500 of them in the wild.

There's not many, but there's a lot more than there was a little while ago. Before the virus. Yeah, they've been pretty good. Which is interesting. The only animal, like wild animal that they found it in has been a tiger. Oh, really? Which is just like how the tiger get tested. No people can get tested, but we got them for all the zoo tigers.

Exactly. Yeah, so there has been a tiger that has it. And then I think a couple domestic animals have been tested positive too. But as far as I know, wild animals or, you know, enclosed wild animals, that tiger is the only one. Anyway, so there's about 500 of them. There used to be less than that, but they've had some pretty good conservation. And their numbers have remained relatively stable for a while now and even gone up a little bit. Anyway, though, the tiger that we're going to talk about today wasn't actually a tiger in the wild.

It was a tiger in a zoo. Her name was Tatiana, which is a nice Russian name for Siberian tiger. It's a good tiger name. Yeah. She was born in Denver, and then she, at four years old, well, sorry, after she was born, she was sent to San Francisco. And at the time of this attack, she was four years old. So this is an attack of a tiger that was in California. activity.

Yeah. What year? 2007. Okay. Good year. Yeah, great year. 2007 was a good year. I think 2007 was a pretty poor year for me.

I think it was probably one of my worst years, actually. Huh. But... You want to get into it? No, we'll sleep that. We'll be that in the past. All right. Maybe next podcast.

Yeah, maybe, you know, if coronavirus keeps going, I'm sure I'll open up even more. Sure. Anyway, Tatiana had a kind of a history. A few years before this incident. that we're going to talk about. She had mauled a keeper that was too close to an enclosure grill when he was feeding her. And she pulled his arm through that grill and really mulled it pretty bad. The dude was in the hospital and he sued the zoo and there's this whole thing. So she kind of had a bit of a history. So fast forward, we're in 2007. There's three dudes that are in the zoo and the zoo's closing.

So the zoo closes at five and they're just kind of in one of the last groups to leave. And thereby the tiger exhibit and Tatiana gets out and we're going to kind of go into that a little bit of how this tiger got out of its exhibit but she gets out and the three people there we have Carlos Sosa Jr. who's 17 and then two brothers Paul and Cool Beard Dallowall. So there's these three guys and there by the tiger exhibit they likely were doing some stuff to make this tiger angry whether that's throwing things inside the exhibit or jumping up on the wall and kind of like running around and yelling at the tiger, there's a good chance that they were provoking the tiger. And we're going to talk a little bit more about why there's a good chance that happened, but probably happened. So Tatiana

is pissed off. She hates that she's being provoked, jumps out of her cage. And she immediately hits Cool Beer, who is the 20. She just like jumped out? Yeah, which we're going to talk about. She jumps out. They should have thought about that. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. actually, but she mauls Cool Beer. And instead of running away, both Carlos Soza Jr. and Cool Beer's brother, Paul, kind of stand their ground and yell at her, and she comes at Carlos Soza instead. I probably wouldn't have done that. It's a big tiger.

To their credit, if a tiger jumped out of its enclosure. Me and Wes, I'm going to attack you and West. I'm not yelling. Yeah. What are you going to do? Probably run. Oh. I'll say this much.

Like with bears, I've had some pretty scary circumstances that I've had to do with like going into their dens and all of that stuff. But recently I was in India and I got to go to this tiger enclosure where there's a tiger that they had that had killed someone and they had this big enclosure for it. But to feed it, they'd bring it into this really small enclosure that you could get right up against the bars. And when that thing came in and started like eating and staring at me, I've never like been so. intimidated by an animal like never in my life have seen an animal that just wanted to kill me so badly and like I knew the second that tiger was out I was toast there was absolutely nothing I could do and with bears there's this whole suite of things that I know I can try and do to survive and I was just like man if this thing gets out I am just screwed it was so big and so powerful so I don't I don't know

for me I I agree like at some extent I agree that what do you do you know I I'm pretty confident I would stand my ground. If one of you were getting mauled. I think so too. Yeah. But I don't blame. I would rather like die than run away from my best friend or my brother getting eaten. I wouldn't blame you guys for running.

Yeah. But Carlos Soza is the next to get mauled. Yeah. And he's killed by this tiger. So he regrets it. Yeah. But he's killed. And probably part of that is because the brothers do take off.

when the tiger starts mauling him. He gets his throat slash pretty immediately by the tiger. So maybe they, you know, who knows? I'm guessing their whole account of this thing is sealed because I couldn't find anything that's from the brothers. Anyways, we're going to get into like what happened legally after all of this. And I'm guessing that because they did end up reaching a settlement with these people that everything kind of got sealed up.

They can't talk. There are 911 calls and a few other things that you can access from this. Oh, interesting. I couldn't pull them up for some reason, but they are. out there. I wonder who the legal representation for the tiger was. We're going to talk about that, actually. So Carlos Sosa tragically mauled to death by this tiger, the brothers runoff, and they go to get help. And they don't go very far. There's a cafe about 300 yards away, 250 yards away. And this part's pretty scary to me. They run to this cafe, and they're banging on the door trying to get in.

and the cafe workers, because the zoo had just closed, they think that these are like crazy people that are just left in the zoo, and they refuse to open the door for them. So these two dudes know that there's like a tiger that just possibly killed their friend and that, you know, is still out there and they're banging on the door trying to get in.

And the cafe does immediately call the police, but they call it on the brothers because they're like, oh, there's these two crazy dudes, you know, and they're saying a tiger attacked them, but they don't, they've never had anything like this happen before, so they don't really believe them. And so the police take 23 minutes to respond. The cafe realizes through the zoo communication that there is a tiger out.

Cool beer is outside and he gets to a pay phone or something and he calls the police. Well, I thought he was the one that died. Carlos says it. Yeah. So Cool beer has been mauled at this point. Okay, yeah. But he didn't die. He gets on the phone and he's like, they won't let us in, you know, all this stuff is going on.

And then while he's on the phone, the police show up. But at this point, Tatiana has followed. their trail of blood to where they are. And she's just kind of sitting nearby. And then she attacks in Mals Paul. And then as the police show up, she's attacking Cool Beer too. And so he's on the phone with them when she starts attacking him. And the call ends.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And so she's attacking him. The police show up. There's this whole problem with them even getting in the zoo because the zoo's on lockdown because they have a freaking tiger. It's like on the loose killing people. Yeah.

And then it's like tracked these two dudes down. and it starts mauling them. And the crazy thing about that, too, is it walks past the warthog exhibit. It walks past a lot of different stuff that it could kill to go get these dudes. And there's this whole discussion online about whether this was like a vengeance attack or not.

And tigers are one of the few animals where if you do look into that, there's some pretty compelling instances that look like they just get pissed off enough to where they're like, I'm killing those people. Yeah. I remember a story you told me

about a hunter wounding attack. And the tiger just like camping out at his cabin for a while until the guy came out. Yeah, there's a whole book. It's called The Tiger. I haven't read it yet, but it's about that. There's some pretty wild things with tigers and kind of vengeance is like a very human characteristic, but that's the closest thing that it comes to. It's more just them getting so provoked that they're just zeroed in on neutralizing whatever's provoking them.

So anyways, it follows the kids there, starts mauling them again. The police do show up. And when they turn on their lights to distract the tiger from mulling, I think it's mulling cool beer at the time, they turn on the lights and it works miraculously. The tiger starts coming towards them and they open fire on it and they shoot it a ton of times and then go up and shoot it in the head to make sure it's dead. So tragically, Tatiana as well dies. What happens afterwards is obviously there's a lot of lawsuits because you don't go to the zoo thinking that maybe a tiger is going to get out and kill you. you know whether or not these dudes provoke this tiger uh they're they're kids you know we're talking about a 17 and 19 and a 23 year old all three of them had alcohol in their system all three of

them had marijuana in their system and that sucks that like they're probably getting blamed for all that stuff but how many people are going to the zoo every day that have alcohol in their system or marijuana in their system yelling stuff and doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing and it's actually a misdemeanor to harass the animals in the zoo so have they gotten caught doing this, they would have been, you know, and not attacked. Sure. They would have been given a misdemeanor. They just pushed this tiger too far, and it was in an enclosure that it could get out of.

They go through litigation. Cool beer and Paul Bulsu. They get $900,000 as a settlement, which is like pretty good settlement, I think, you know, for surviving. So would you, you think you'd get mauled by a tiger for $900,000? If you knew you were going to live through. I was honestly thinking about that. My question would be, we lose one of us, too.

If your friend dies, that's the problem. I do it. It's a, you know, one, one tiger mauling. Yeah. Or, you know. Well, they got 450 years of working a job you don't like. Yeah.

True. $450,000 is a lot of money. Oh, they had to split it? That's the settlement for both of them. We're going to get into kind of the negligence. on the part of the zoo, which he's going to be talked about. The cafe or that, like, food place probably should have let him in in hindsight, right? Yeah.

So's, yeah, they definitely should have. Soz's dad, the kid that died, said that Paul did admit being drunk and waving and yelling at the animal. However, and there was, like, some zoo visitors that were witnesses saying that that probably happened, but there wasn't any hard proof that had happened. So they did win these lawsuits. They won $900,000. And then the Soza family won an undisclosed amount.

So I'm guessing it's like quite a bit more because their boy died. Lifetime passes to the zoo. Yeah. Yeah. The zoo did actually shut down for a couple weeks. Both teams hired different people to kind of be their expert witnesses. Lori Gage was a tiger expert that analyzed the scene. And she said the tiger was almost certainly provoked to a high level to be able to jump out of the enclosure.

And then she says, with my knowledge of tiger behavior, I cannot imagine a tiger. trying to jump out of its enclosure unless it was provoked. So that, I thought that was interesting. I can't imagine a tiger trying to jump out of its enclosure unless it was provoked. That's definitely imaginable to me. To me, if you put a tiger in an enclosure that it can get out of, it's imaginable that it's going to get out of it. So how long had the tiger been in this zoo?

It's been there for a few years. Years. And it hadn't ever tried to do this before. It had never tried to jump out. Now, the, uh, Noah. Well, sure. Yeah, that's true. On the other hand, like the Sosa family attorney Michael Cardoza, his quote was,

keep in mind these are animals. Who knows why they do anything? Strong argument. So imagine, I just read that and I'm like, imagine you're this lady who's spent her entire life devoted to studying tiger behavior. And this lawyer just walks down, it's like, who knows why they do anything? You know? Oh, I just can't imagine. how frustrated she must have been. She had to go to the scene and follow the blood trail and learn all

this stuff. This guy's just like, well, they're animals. But he won. So he must have been a good lawyer. Okay. So now we're going to get into how this actually happened. I'm going to paint a mental picture for you guys here. We've got the enclosure and it's got a wall with all these things for the tiger to play on and like a little jungle. And then there's a little hill that goes down into a moat. And then on the other side of that moat, there's a 12 and a half foot concrete wall. So pretty much for this tiger to be able to get out, it had to jump from the bottom of this moat to the top of a 12 and a half foot wall. Now the moat was completely empty.

There was no water in it. In 1960, I believe, there's a Bengal tiger in the same exhibit that jumped out. And so they filled the moat with water. And then the Bengal tiger couldn't get out anymore because you couldn't get the same purchase, like jumping out of water. But then, you know, they just kind of put this new tiger in there and figured things to be fine. A bigger species. Siberian tigers are the biggest species of tiger.

Yeah, they just assumed that it was going to be okay. Now, 12 feet, 12 and a half? I mean, I feel like... You would think that would be enough. The best NBA players could probably get to like a rim that's 12 and a half. Yeah, and this is the tallest. Like the best jumpers, I know. Yeah, sure.

We've had this discussion before, though. Nothing. You've said like, oh, is there anything that jumps better than an NBA player? and almost everything does, especially a tiger. Yeah. It's insane what they can do. I've seen these videos where they just jump, you know, they jump an insane amount up or over.

You think about an NBA player with their arms up, they're already nine feet. They just got to go like three feet. Yeah. A tiger's got to jump. It's got to go some distance, but like her, yeah, her muscles and like her like kind of pouncing and like fully extending her body,

she's probably close to that length. Right. in her body too. And then she just has to get her paws out in front of her and grab that ledge and pull up. Well, like 25 years of cat videos. 25 years of cat videos. I don't know.

It's probably been about that long that I've been watching cat videos. If I were in charge of the zoo, I would have been like this. 25 years. 25 years. 25 more. But I'm just saying if I was in charge of this tiger exhibit, I would have made like an 80-foot wall. Like, just no one can see the tigers.

I don't care. I don't know. This isn't Jurassic Park. We're not talking about a T-Rex here. And make it all electrified. Okay. Well, in Jurassic Park, it doesn't work either. That's true.

That's not a great book. I ever watched the movie. A few times. They get out. It's probably the movie I've seen the most. They do get out. That's true. Something, okay, so we're going to talk about this a little bit.

Because there actually is a standard for how high tiger enclosure walls should be. And that standards enforced by the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums. And what they recommend is 16.4. feet. 16.4, like, that's a pretty precise number. Specific. Someone sat down and really, you know, did the numbers on what a Siberian tiger can do. And they realized at 16.4, we're safe. That's what their recommendation is.

So technically a zoo like San Francisco could have a 12.5 foot wall. They get checked every once in a while and they'll be like, oh, you know, your tiger exhibit isn't quite up to standard. And they're like, okay, you know, we'll work on that. As long as their tigers aren't getting out, which mind you, one did get out. 1960. They're not too concerned about it. I'm kind of curious, would any other animal have like a higher wall, you think? I don't know. I was thinking about that too. Like a bird? Lepherds are great climbers. Yeah, birds probably have a lot of it. If I'm talking non-bird animals, I would think maybe a leopard. Because they really are just incredible climbers and they're not as big as tigers. They're not as

powerful, but they really can climb. Okay, so 16.4 is the recommended standard. We're at 12 and a half feet. So after this happened, they interviewed the director of the zoo, and he said, obviously, now that something's happened, we're going to be revisiting that actual height. So that was this quote. Like, we're going to revisit that. Pretty terrible response, in my opinion.

You got to kind of disown up to that. And people probably found out, hey, this isn't the first time this has happened with this enclosing. Right. And for me, if I'm going to the zoo and I'm going to be around animals that are potentially dangerous, I kind of just have in the back of my head, I'm safe. They're in enclosures. The experts have looked at this. They've decided that this animal can't get out of this enclosure.

Yeah. And, you know, they failed to do that. And so for me, as much as you want to say these guys provoked them or they were drunk or whatever, you expect a certain amount of safety going to the zoo. And if the tiger gets out and kills you or malls you, I'd be mad. Yeah, exactly. I'd be pretty mad. If it killed you, I'd be pretty upset. So I definitely side on the side of the victims in this one. It sucks too because they end up having to kill a tiger

because the tiger just got provoked and got out and did what tigers do. Well, who's the real victim here is what I want to know? Who? And this tiger was just doing what naturally came to it. It got blasted. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's no, like, winner here.

I don't think it should have been killed. Yeah, I mean, Actually, it probably should have been, because not animals, once they kill once. It's not even that. But like tigers are going to kill if they're wild tigers. Well, we're going to get into the tiger biology a little bit, but it's not, the whole, like, man-eater thing isn't like a proven thing. There definitely have been tigers in the past that decide that humans are easy prey,

and they just start picking off humans. But it's not like a rule that if an animal eats or kills someone that's suddenly addicted to killing people. Where'd that come from? Is this like a Hollywood thing? Yeah, it's a Hollywood thing. But I mean, on the other hand, a lot of animals go to the zoo if they've ate a person because... Because they want to avoid that.

You don't want those in the wild. What it is, it's more, that's more of a liability issue, though, where if you, if there's a tiger out in the wild that kills someone, and then they decide not to put it in the zoo and it kills someone else, then suddenly you have a really good legal case to be like, wait, you guys just let this animal continue living in the wild and when it's already killed someone. Better safe than sight. Yeah, so generally it's a liability thing. It's not so much like, oh, it's for sure going to kill more people. Yeah. Anyway. Do your original question, though, like, why did they kill the tiger?

They had to because it was mauling somewhere. Yeah, it was out. It's obvious. Like, I think had they had a more controlled environment where they could have... Sure. You know, had it just gotten out or something. But when it's like right next to someone and about to go attack someone again, you got to shoot it. They killed Harambe just for, like, protecting that little kid.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I know I'm going to maybe play a little bit of devil's advocate here. Yeah. And maybe this should just be saved for later. But just the fact in the first place that it was being kept in a probably not. Yeah.

You know, it's naturally sized habitat is hundreds of miles. Yeah. And all of a sudden, it's not natural for tigers to be cooped up. And you can't really blame one for like going crazy and try to escape. But okay. So like, but the interesting thing about that. And I was thinking. about that too is the fact that this tiger probably knew it could get out of its exhibit

right now it didn't do it until it had a reason to until it was like finally pissed off enough that it was like okay i'm going to go kill these kids you know but it probably knew up until that point that it could make that jump yeah and it didn't like a lot of zoos do a really great job of giving the animal everything it needs um you know giving it shelter giving it protection which are things animals want you know that whole hierarchy of needs and And then also this tiger was specifically brought in to mate with a male tiger, so had mating opportunities. And then they also get really great enrichment.

So a lot of times these animals that we think just want to be out roaming these huge areas, the only reason they're roaming is so they can find food. It's a fight for survival. Yeah. And like if they actually have everything they need in a smaller area, a lot of times they're pretty content. Now I'm not to say that like Tatiana was that way. They're definitely our animals that shouldn't be in captivity.

But zoos do a great job of contributing to conservation and inspiring. people. I'm pretty pro-Zoo if they do it the right way. Sure. And this one really made me think about that because she just decided to jump out. You know, this wasn't something she was trying every day. And they were like, oh, that Tatiana, she's figuring it out. One day she's like, I'm out of here. I'm going to go kill something. I guess thinking about it that way, that's not a bad gig. Because I'm already sitting in my room, basically 20 hours a day anyways. And they're like, you get food and someone to have sex with. I would be hard pressed to think of any reason why.

I wouldn't accept that. Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting point. Thanks. Yeah. It is crazy just like how much of a grudge tigers can hold for something like that. Totally. So that same tiger that I saw in India, the guy that comes in and feeds it, that tiger absolutely hates that dude. It's this huge male tiger.

It's pop is as big as my head. And when the dude comes in and feeds it, it just jumps up against the bars and is just like roaring and hissing and spitting. And that guy's like, I have no doubt in my mind that the second this tiger got out, it would come kill me. And he doesn't abuse it or there's nothing going on there. It's just decided that it doesn't like this dude. And that tiger's really well taken. It has a huge enclosure and tons of space. It'd be crazy just putting yourself in their shoes, throwing some little rocks or something at the tiger.

I don't know why they did it, probably to make it react or do stuff. They're high too, yeah. And then you're just walking away like, oh, where should we go now? Maybe I want to check out the monkeys. And then all of a sudden there's a tiger jumping on your back. Yeah. Like you just, that's not even a thought for me at a zoo, you know? You guys should do a little online research how often animals get out in zoos.

Oh, really? Even here in Utah, the leopard got out pretty recently. It's not an aggressive animal, but they're just good at figuring out how to get out. And it didn't go very far. It went up a nearby tree. But yeah, I was thinking about that too, Jeff. They probably had spent most, I mean, the zoo was closing. So they probably harassed a lot of animals that day.

And they were like, we did it, you know? And they're like, save the tiger for last. And that's the one that got them. Anyway, the zoo did extend there. They reopened. They extended their wall to the minimum height of 16 feet, four inches. And then on top added some plexiglass to a total height of nine. 19 feet. No tigers are getting out of there anymore. They put a hot wire in. I imagine, I don't know

really what their current tiger status is. So was that tiger in the prime of its life? It's four years kind of like when tigers are really fully developed and yeah, I mean they brought that tiger ready to hop out of zoo enclosures. Yeah, exactly. They brought it into mate. So it was it was sexually mature, which means it's in its prime. I read a few different things. One said it she was 200 something pounds and one said she was 350. You never discuss a woman's weight west. I'm sorry. Do males or females get bigger? The males get bigger.

Okay. Are there any difference in aggression levels between the genders or is that? You know what? I don't, I'm not totally sure what the proportion of attacks is on people, females versus males. I do know that they will cub defend. So female with cubs is probably going to be a bit trickier than like just your regular old tiger. But from what I don't know if there's a big difference between proportion of attacks

between males and females. Yeah. Siberian tigers aren't responsible for a ton of attacks because they live in pretty remote areas in the wild. There are a few out there that I've read about, but Bengal tigers in India are the ones that are really notorious. And it's because they share space with tons of people. And their Bengals are the highest population of tigers.

Yeah, by far. Yeah. I was watching a game show the other day, and they had a question, What's the highest amount of people a single tiger has killed? Yeah. And it was like a true or false question. Do you guys want to guess the number? Yeah, I'm going to guess 250.

By a single tiger? By a single tiger. It's insane what some tigers are killed. Really? I'll go 200,000. 200,000? Yeah, it's my lucky number. That's a little high. So West wins, Price is Right, rules, and just any rules, because that was ridiculous.

but it was 436 people one single tiger killed in Nepal and India. Yeah, like they used to, those kind of like great white hunters that they used to have, you know, back in the 1800s. They would have those guys go over to India and hunt these tigers that have killed hundreds of people and leopards too. Leopards would kill a couple hundred people too. So it's pretty crazy and we'll probably do an episode about some of those stories because they're wide. Yeah. We ought to. Yeah.

And those are Bengal tigers. And they still kill like 50 people a year, which is a pretty high number for an animal. Per tiger. Yeah. No, not per tiger. Okay. So we're going to give a couple more facts about Siberian tigers. They are the largest of all tiger species.

They in the wild can kill a lot of different animals, a few different ungulates, which are deer and elk and moose. They do kill moose. They also kill both Asiatic black bears and brown bears. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And they actually kill, even though the brown bears are bigger and tougher, they kill more brown bears because they kind of prefer the same habitat as tigers, kind of these open grasslands and stuff,

whereas black bears are more kind of up in the trees. What's the plan of attack when they attack in something that big? They're stock and kill predators. Do they like go for the neck? They go for the neck. Yeah, they actually try and like sever the spine from what I understand. So like a bite to the spine to sever it. And that's not for everything but for bears.

That's a really good question. But for bears, that's kind of their tactic because they need to kill them real quick. With a deer or something like that. Does it paralyze the bear? It probably just kills it. Yeah. So they don't mess around with their prey. They just kind of go to the kill.

Yeah. So with any other animal like a deer or something like a little bit smaller. Yeah. Most of the big cats will suffocate it by biting the, like the threat. throat. Sure. And they just clamp down so hard on the throat, the animal actually kind of suffocates. And, uh, but with the bears, because they can really get messed up, they'll go for this kind of killing blow. There's not very much the record of that, but they do guess that bears might make up 2% of a Siberian tiger's yearly food, which is pretty high. That's higher than I thought.

And then they do kill wolves and stuff too. Anywhere that Siberian tigers are, you're not going to find many wolves because wolves don't want to share the same habitat with them. These guys are kind of like the badass of any animal. If you can kill a brown bear, you know, if it's not, not only can you kill it, but it's like part of your diet, then you're a pretty tough animal. So their tongues are so rough that they can clean meat from bone, and they average 20 pounds of meat per day in the wild. Now, that doesn't mean they're killing every day.

It means they probably kill something like once a week, but they just eat so much that it averages out to about 20 pounds. Right. And they'll come back to it. I can relate. Yeah. Okay. So we probably should talk about, you know, what you would actually do if you encounter a tiger in the wild.

And the main thing is avoiding a tiger attack. So making some noise, kind of letting a tiger know you're coming is one thing. Because then you're not like surprising one. You're not risking pissing off a tiger and having an attack you. So they kind of say to make a basic human level of noise, not necessarily big loud noises, because again, that might piss off the tiger. And then also just kind of traveling in groups. Most predators or animals don't like attacking groups of people. So that's kind of an important thing too. Outside of that, if you actually are attacked by a tiger, there's very little that you can do if you don't have like a gun or bear spray or something to kind of fend it off. If it wants to kill you, it's probably going to kill you.

One thing to remember, though, about like most of the tiger attacks that are happening in the world are happening in India. And they're happening in this region where you have these people, you know, who live a very kind of rural lifestyle. And they're out fishing or like collecting wood or doing these different things where, The tiger mistakes them for prey or thinks their prey and decides to kill them. That is something, it's really hard for them to avoid these kind of things because of their lifestyle. And so there are, I'm sure there's groups out there that are trying to teach and educate people on how to be better prepared in Tiger Country. But if you, if someone listening to us decides to go out, spend some time in Tiger Country, what I would recommend is talking to an expert and getting an expert kind of opinion on what to do.

That's good advice. Because talking, you're making noise, tigers will be frightened. Just bring an expert along and you can be making noise with. You got more people there. It's a good solution. Yeah. That's efficient. It is.

Good idea, Wes. Well, that's pretty much. All right. This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. Wireless can feel like a world of traps

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No, you really touched it. Yeah, I think we got it. Okay, cool. Let's go into some of our categories. Jeff, let's do your category first. Okay. Oh, wait. Go ahead and announce it.

We've talked about a few, but I'm assuming you mean what's your favorite tiger. Yeah, exactly. So we're going, what's your favorite tiger? No rules, just your favorite tiger. Yeah. We'll start with Mike. I'm going to go with Hobbs. Okay, so Mike took mind.

You want to explain who Hobbs is? Yeah, so Thomas Hobbs was one of the foremost philosophers of his day back in the 15, 1600s. So you're talking about Thomas Hobbs, not Hobbs, the tiger. I guess maybe that doesn't fit. That doesn't work as a tiger. Maybe I'll go with Tigger then. Tigger. Tigger.

There's a lot. So tigers are my favorite animal, I think. Interesting. I'm pretty sure. It's been kind of like the one that comes to mind whenever someone asked question for a long time now yeah um they're up there for me there's so many good tigers yeah yeah you could get over 16 and a half feet with his tail downs yeah all right i'm gonna go hops west from calvin and hobbs the actual hobbs i i grew up with yeah i grew up the actual hobbs

i grew up with calvin and hobbs it was like a very important comic for me sure i have all like the collections and everything i was going to pick i was going to pick actual hobbs yeah I knew you were going to you as well. So you did fake Hobbs or real Hobbs that Calvin and Hobbs is probably inspired by. I don't know. I wonder. Yeah. Tigers are also a favorite for me, so that is a hard pick.

They're one of the cooler animals out there. I think they're awesome. Yeah. Tigger's like, I mean, I like Calvin and Hobbs comics better, but Tigger's kind of cooler how he hops on his tape. I never got into Winnie the Pooh at all. Yeah. I just didn't do it for me. For me, it's your favorite.

Well, I'll pick a couple of my favorite episodes. And show you after that. For me, I was leaning Tony the Tiger, but then I was like, he's kind of a, you know. He just like bursts into scenes and like, they're great. And like, he's a little bit too much. He's a shill. So I think I'm going to go with the Tiger and Swiss Family Robinson. Ooh, yeah.

That's a good. Does it have a name? No. Okay. Yeah. But like if you haven't seen the movie, there's a little boy just like there, there's, Whole family's stranded on an island and this little boy really wants to catch a tiger. And the dad's just like as encouraging as possible for this little like 12 to catch a tiger.

He's all in on a tiger plan. And then they like use the tiger to kill some pirates. It's a good, it's a good tiger. Yeah, it's funny. We recently watched that movie. And I had been reading about how easily this tiger jumped out of its enclosure. And when it's in that pit in that movie, I'm like, oh, that tiger could eat. easily jump out of that thing.

They also just full on have that tiger fight some dogs and stuff in that movie. The animal cruelty laws have come a long way because in that movie they're just having them do everything. Like I wonder how many tigers they went through. Or dogs. Yeah, or dogs, exactly. Probably a lot more dogs than tigers. All right.

Well, let's move on to our next category. So let's put it cage match against our last animal, the grizzly bear. Yeah. We've kind of already answered that. If you get full-size Siberian tiger, full-size grizzly bear, 10 times. How many times does the tiger win? I think the tiger wins seven out of ten. Okay.

There are records of bears killing tigers in those same places where tigers kill bears. But if one of them kind of seeks out the other one as a potential prey, then you know that one's pretty confident that it's generally going to win. But wait, so we're talking about tigers are like the stock and kill. Stock and kill. But if they're like square. up in a ring match. They're both prepared.

They've gone through months of intensive training. I don't know. I could see it being a little more evenly split. That's true. That's a good point. Because everything I did read about those kind of like predations and like the tigers attacking bears was it talked a lot about how the element of surprise is really important for the tigers in those meetups.

So you bring up a good point. Like if you do have a bear and a tiger in a cage and they're fighting each other. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. that does make me think more about it. Maybe it'd be more of like a 50-50 split or maybe even the bear. Yeah.

I don't know. All right. And the brown bears that they're killing are probably smaller than your average brown bear. I don't know. Well, they have some pretty big brown bears over there. Okay. Our next category is where can you see this animal? So there's not a great place to go see Siberian tigers.

They're incredibly rare. They are getting a little bit more common. But really, your only spot is that spot we were talking about. San Francisco Zoo. because you can get real close to them there. So if you do want to see one in the wild, you got to go to Eastern Russia. Don't go to Siberia. Yeah, don't go to Siberia.

Don't get tricked into thinking. Okay, so how are we messing things up for them? They are being killed by poaching, hunting. The hunting is like legal hunting for them is pretty much over, but they still are poached, you know, mostly for their use in traditional Chinese medicine. And then obviously, like, habitat loss is a huge thing for them. So if we can kind of restore habitat for them, they'll probably bounce back. And luckily, they are an animal that a lot of people care about.

So they do have a lot of conservation groups that are kind of fighting for them. That's good. It's nice. Yeah. All right. And then our last category is, do we like this animal? So we know Mike, Mike has a number of animals that he truly doesn't like. Me and Jeff like most animals.

That's fair. But we did, you've already kind of said that you're a fan of tigers. Yeah, I love tigers. Just aesthetically, as far as their natural behaviors and capabilities, just physically, I don't know. I think that they're a compelling animal just beyond just their beauty. If I were to compare it to a human counterpart, it would be like a James Bond kind of, like, cool and smooth and like really lithe and graceful. But like super dangerous, too, you know. Daniel Craig's James Bond.

because he's got the cool eyes. No way, dude. It's got to be Pierce Brosnan. Pierce, Prasden. Yeah. It's one of the worst James Bond. Yeah, but he's still, you know. He's pretty cool.

He was kind of our James Bond growing up, I guess. I get that. For me, I'm the same way. I absolutely adore tigers. Like I said, I was in India recently. I got to see two wild tigers, which was such a treat. I was in a national park,

specifically looking for tigers, and I saw two of them. I get so excited to see animals in the wild. Rarely does it, like, make me emotional and seeing tigers in the wild kind of did. It was such an impressive animal to see in the wild. And they're just, yeah, they're just so cool.

Like, they're just kind of the top predator. There's obviously, like, bigger predators. We got, like, orcas and polar bears and stuff. But as far as just being good at what they do, there's not anything much better than the tiger. Yeah, I mean, obviously I like tigers. If I'm, like, ranking it, I would probably put it top 10 animals. I'd put behind the...

grizzly that we already did. Yeah. And then... You pick like a Jaguar over a tiger. As far as big cats go, it'd be my second favorite. Jaguars are my favorite. Yeah.

I have a hard time ranking the big cats. Yeah. I might be like Jaguar number one too. And then maybe even Mountain Lions before Tigers. What? Interesting. I love a mountain lion.

No way. Yeah. Really? You like Mountain Lions more than lions. I think so. They're just so cool. I'm not big on lions. Okay.

I don't know. The whole like King of the Jungle monikers. Well, and they're like in prides and kind of lazy and like tigers are solitary hunters, which is pretty cool. Yeah. I don't know. No offense to all you lion lovers out there. I'm sure we're going to talk about lions too. I love lions. Yeah. I don't know. The whole king thing thing thing thing. I'm just not a monarchist. The funny thing too is that tigers are bigger than lions. But I think growing up, we all kind of thought that lions were bigger because they are king in the jungle. But tigers are bigger. And they're actually are Asiatic lions. So they did use to share space.

and they still do in one tiny little part of India. And I bet the lions are afraid of tigers because they're just bigger and meaner. So tigers are the biggest cat. Yes, Siberian tigers are the biggest cat. Okay. Yeah, they're the biggest and kind of the toughest, too, as far as I'm concerned. Unless there's like a, the saber-tooth tigers still roaming somewhere out there. There's not.

We'll answer that for you. Oh, there isn't? I've been gone for a long time. One thing that's cool about tigers, like, so I was in India learning about sloth bear. which are this tiny, you know, there's pretty small little Indian species of bear, but they're super aggressive, and that's because they cohabitate with tigers, and they're in the same area as tigers. And so when a tiger comes at one, they hit it with everything they've got.

And tigers are smart enough to kind of do this risk assessment and think, okay, I can kill this thing. They know they can kill a sloth bear, but how messed up am I going to get by taking this on rather than just like a deer? So a lot of times they won't attack a sloth bear because a tiger. tiger needs every muscle in its body to survive, whereas a bear can take a pretty big hit and still survive because it's just eating insects and plants and stuff. But a tiger, to be able to continue to hunt, really needs everything working at full speed. And so if a bear comes out

with everything, the tiger's like, okay. So tigers kind of make everything around them tougher. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's kind of, yeah. So it's pretty neat. They're just a cool animal and one that is, I'm really, I really hope we keep around. Yeah, me too. Anyway, our disclaimer again is we love animals more than anyone in the world. We don't think they're bloodthirsty things. We think that people understanding this stuff will actually help them better appreciate animals rather than be afraid of them. But it is good to have them out there and have that kind of healthy fear of them too. All right.

Sounds good. Thanks for listening, guys. Thanks, everyone. All right. We'll see you later.