Jaguar mauls and kills a keeper at Denver Zoo

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/25/jaguar.mauling.ap/index.html

Got a big safety talk today because of this. It really puts things into perspective if you own or work with potentially dangerous animals...

By the way, I've met a few keepers from Denver, including a couple cat keepers. I'm going to keep looking around for a name, but if anyone hears who she was, please PM me.

I had a zookeeper friend who accidentally had a tiger get out into a runway with him. Luckily, no harm was done.

And I had friends that worked at that zoo in Kansas, something county, when an elephant killed a keeper.

Scary.

Shame that two lives were lost in the incident. Just shows that no matter how careful we are, many types of animals are "wild" animals with wild instincts that don't always make sense to us. They are what they are, and they deserve respect. Hopefully there is little in the way of public backlash for this, as I am sure the keeper would not have wanted harm to come to the cat or others of his kind.

Hypancistrus said:

Hopefully there is little in the way of public backlash for this, as I am sure the keeper would not have wanted harm to come to the cat or others of his kind.

Click to expand...

Denver is a very well respected AZA zoo so I don't think there will be much in the way of public backlash after the investigation is completed.

I checked their website and they have a more detailed blurb about it that says the keeper's name will not be released.

"The zookeeper, 27-year-old Ashlee Pfaff"

Poor woman... Poor beast.

How tragic. Shame we'll never know why she went in.