Can the Era of Animal Attacks in Zoos Finally Come to an End?
Posted by ETISworld.com | Animal Attacks Blog on Saturday, September 20, 2025
There have been a number of attack incidents recently, both in people attacking animals, and animals attacking people. Instead of listing attacks and providing a brief narrative, let's look at some of the pictures and questions.
As far as I can remember, I thought part of the whole ideas of zoos is so that people can view animals safely, no matter what the kind or species. Meanwhile, the animals are situated in ways where they are protected and enabled to have a natural lifespan. Zoos could house the smallest and harmless bird, to large elephants, to reputed as fierce lions.
Animal attacks in zoos might be one of the historically biggest conflicts of interest and ironies.
Considering the number of attacks over the past 3 decades, a number up around 700, a question which presents itself may include, 'what happened?". As though the 'zoo system' totally let down and disappointed the objective of safety.
In an age of global information sharing through computers, it may be high time for zoos around the world to interact on zoo safety issues. Perhaps it used to be there were different kinds of zoos in different regions of the world, and the boundaries of what was a zoo and what was still animals out in the wild differed from region to region.
Violating trust, seems to be the name of the game some times, when visitors and people in various capacities at zoos, cross over the line of the rules of the zoo or their animal interfacing training. Often, when an awry incident involving violence on the part animals does occur, some of the blame of the chain of events before the attack, is due to the boundary crossing.
Today, mid 2025, it may be the era where zoos have in their design, no matter what boundaries are crossed, such as climbing over a fence marked do not enter, sticking a hand through a fence to feed or pet an animal, falling into an animal's area, animal broke through a fence, flood occurred and waters rose high enough the animal spilled out on top over the fence, or just negligence, mismanagement, and decrepit protection structures because the zoo got old, no matter what the scenario, it is 99.999% impossible for any kind of interface that appears endangering to occur.
Computers now can list the possibilities, each zoo can have a computer system, with an ongoing list of could be possibilities and the latest news break, and use computer assisted management systems to ensure the entire zoo is maintained. If a gate latch is compromised, the computer sounds a beep and gives the location in less than an instant after it happens; it might even be able to relock or secure a gate or other protective mechanism. Of course involving cameras in the system is pretty evident.
SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems for zoos seems a plausible solution. Many solutions exist.
As far as I can remember, I thought part of the whole ideas of zoos is so that people can view animals safely, no matter what the kind or species. Meanwhile, the animals are situated in ways where they are protected and enabled to have a natural lifespan. Zoos could house the smallest and harmless bird, to large elephants, to reputed as fierce lions.
Animal attacks in zoos might be one of the historically biggest conflicts of interest and ironies.
Considering the number of attacks over the past 3 decades, a number up around 700, a question which presents itself may include, 'what happened?". As though the 'zoo system' totally let down and disappointed the objective of safety.
In an age of global information sharing through computers, it may be high time for zoos around the world to interact on zoo safety issues. Perhaps it used to be there were different kinds of zoos in different regions of the world, and the boundaries of what was a zoo and what was still animals out in the wild differed from region to region.
Violating trust, seems to be the name of the game some times, when visitors and people in various capacities at zoos, cross over the line of the rules of the zoo or their animal interfacing training. Often, when an awry incident involving violence on the part animals does occur, some of the blame of the chain of events before the attack, is due to the boundary crossing.
Today, mid 2025, it may be the era where zoos have in their design, no matter what boundaries are crossed, such as climbing over a fence marked do not enter, sticking a hand through a fence to feed or pet an animal, falling into an animal's area, animal broke through a fence, flood occurred and waters rose high enough the animal spilled out on top over the fence, or just negligence, mismanagement, and decrepit protection structures because the zoo got old, no matter what the scenario, it is 99.999% impossible for any kind of interface that appears endangering to occur.
Computers now can list the possibilities, each zoo can have a computer system, with an ongoing list of could be possibilities and the latest news break, and use computer assisted management systems to ensure the entire zoo is maintained. If a gate latch is compromised, the computer sounds a beep and gives the location in less than an instant after it happens; it might even be able to relock or secure a gate or other protective mechanism. Of course involving cameras in the system is pretty evident.
SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems for zoos seems a plausible solution. Many solutions exist.
