Keeper Deaths

A Zebra killed a keeper at Frankfurt Zoo

But I don't know when
rather a comment on the question can they kill
 
This thread has a gap in contributions between the end of 2012 and last month. In the intervening period there have been two keeper deaths in the UK, which are discussed in other threads. At South Lakes, Sarah McClay was killed on 24th May 2013 when a tiger entered the den she was cleaning, by getting through a door with a defective bolt. At Hamerton, Rosa King was also killed by a tiger on 29th May 2017: I have not found any reports of the full inquest into this case, which was due to have taken place by now, so there may have been a delay for some reason. As far as I am aware there has been no public explanation of the circumstances which led to Ms King's death.
 
I had assumed both were already mentioned in the thread; I actually had to include "-Hamerton" when doing a google search for keeper deaths because it was pages and pages about it. The inquest was supposed to happen May 29, but I have no idea how long those take - maybe they're getting permissions and giving results to relevant authorities before making it public? I know the cat got into the enclosure she was working in through an open security gate, and I've seen heavy implication that it happened because of aging safety barriers that were unsafe, which they'd been ordered to fix before. I haven't seen anything that conclusively states the tiger broke through the barrier vs human error, though. They also didn't have radios to communicate.

In the South Lakes case, he didn't get through just the one den door with the defective bolt - he then went through two sliding gates and and a final one that led to the keeper corridor, where he attacked her. He then dragged her back through all of those doors to his den and his female partner. The zoo didn't learn anything from the incident, going by the number of animals that have since died from things like escaping enclosures or otherwise getting out and interacting with the public:
Fresh concerns over Cumbrian zoo where 500 animals died
Calls for Cumbrian zoo to be shut after 486 animals die in four years
South Lakes Safari Zoo where almost 500 animals died in just FOUR YEARS and tiger keeper was mauled to death WILL stay open
 
Today, a 22-year old intern from Indiana, Alexandra Black, was killed by a lion at Conservators Center in North Carolina. She'd been working there for only 10 days. The lion, Matthai, was eventually killed by deputies after attempts to tranquilize him failed. Alexandra had been cleaning an enclosure with several others when Matthai somehow escaped and went after them. At present, it isn't known (or hasn't been released) how he escaped, but judging by photos on their website and elsewhere of how these animals were kept, an incident happening at this place doesn't strike me as a surprise.

Matthai seems to have been the major fan favorite of the place's animals, with many posts online talking about visiting him, donating just for him, how sweet he looked, etc. The center has been quickly scrubbing all traces of him on their social media - he's already disappeared from their page on animals they have, and many links I've come across to videos of him on their youtube, instagram, etc are now not working. Given it hasn't even been 12 hours since Alexandra was killed and they're already doing this, I'm very interested to know what happened here!

Lion kills 22-year-old intern after escaping enclosure at North Carolina conservatory
 
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I'm just gonna predict that the ARAs (aka animal rights activists) will capitalize on this most recent tragedy to push their anti-captivity agenda while being more upset about the lion's death than the death of the keeper.
 
TARZAN said:
The elephant at London was Dilberta/Gita, Twycross had a keeper killed by an elephant in 1991, also Aspinalls two keepers, one in the eighties, if I remember correctly the young bull pulled the keeper up against the bars of the enclosure in the eighties, the second I think also happened about 2001, with an Asian cow that had just recently joined the collection.
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just to correct on this the previous poster is correct it was mya that caused the accident ,not gheeta
 
Although it didn't result in a fatality, I have just read in Professor Hans Kruuk's new autobiography 'The Call of Carnivores' (published in 2019) of an instance where a European badger named Tim seriously attacked a keeper at a zoo in Dundee and at a later date went on to escape its enclosure in broad daylight where it then mauled a young boy.

Before going to the zoo, the badger in question had been part of a captive colony kept in a large enclosure. There, it had attacked and seriously injured both Hans Kruuk and the caretaker of the scientific institute in a single prolonged attack, apparently partly caused by misinterpreting a social behaviour signal.
 
Stefka said:
BTW, I honestly had no idea that Giant Anteaters can be that dangerous to people.
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Typically the anteater isn't an aggressive animal at all and it will actively avoid people by fleeing. However, under the right circumstances they can be dangerous to people indeed. In addition to the death of the zookeeper in Argentina there have actually been several people in Brazil who have been killed by this species in the wild.

From what I recall in most of these circumstances the person / persons attacked were hunters who were pursuing the animal or otherwise harrassing it. However, there was a single and quite tragic case of an old man who was merely walking his dogs which suprised a giant anteater while it was sleeping in long grass and was badly mauled eventually dying from blood loss.

https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(14)00115-X/abstract

https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(16)30156-9/fulltext ( Some disturbing pictures in link)

https://phys.org/news/2014-07-giant-anteaters-hunters-brazil.html

That said it isn't normally humans which are attacked by this animal as it is typically dogs ( Mostly breeds like rottweilers, German shepherds, pitbulls , mastiffs , dogo's etc. ) which try to corner and attack and end up either being wounded or disemboweled / killed (or seriously harming or killing anteaters). In many towns of rural Sao Paulo (anteaters are on the verge of becoming extinct here) this is really quite a serious issue and a dimension of human-wildlife conflict which does negatively impact their conservation.
 
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zoogiraffe said:
Yes you are right that all Asian Elephants in the UK are kept in either free or protacted contact,but then you could say that about ALL Elephants in the UK,because as far as I know there are only the 2 ways of keeping Elephants!!
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That is actually not true. You have two hands-on systems, which are free and protected contact, where keepers actually touch the elephant. Then there is also complete hands off, which means no interaction, no training and so on. There are just very few zoos that do it that way. But interestingly in one of those zoos (Carbaceno in Spain) a keeper was killed by a female elephant this year. She sneaked up to him got a hold and pulled him against the bars, which caused too much trauma. This is also how Bindu killed the second keeper.

That's what most people who work with elephants in PC will tell you: protected contact does not make you safe. It's buying you time to react appropriately. The trunk can't fly at you, but needs to go through a hole first, etc.

Country: Germany
Zoo: Osnabrück
Year: 2021

A keeper forgot to close one of two doors and entered a backstage are, where she encountered the lions. She was able to retreat and only received flesh wounds. The zoo had an electrical control system installed which was actively deactivated.

Country Germany
Zoo: Hagenbeck
Year: 2012

An escaped giant otter attacked maintenance staff after she tripped and fell and injured the two keepers that managed to catch him.
 
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