The attack took place late on Monday at the Hirakawa Zoological Park in Kagoshima, as Mr Akira Furusho, 40. went to clean the tiger’s enclosure without separating the animal in a special compartiment of the cage. Staff members are not permitted to be in cages with dangerous animals, but the rule was evidently broken in this case. The male tiger, named Riku, 5-year-old, will be keeped in life because Furusho’s family asked this. It’s not clear however what triggered the white tiger’s attack, which occurred after the zoo has closed for the day. No one was around at the time of the episode, “and we cannot imagine what happened,” Akinori Ishido, the zoo’s director, told reporters on Tuesday.
The Hirakawa Zoological Park in Kagoshima
White tigers are a variant of the orange Bengal sub-species and owe their colour to a recessive gene. In May 2017, British zookeeper Rosa Kings died at Hamerton Zoo Park in Cambridgeshire, England in what was described as a “freak accident”. The 33-year-old was killed after a tiger entered the enclosure in which she was working. Delhi Zoo recently installed human-sized cages to provide people with a safe place to hide in the event that they fall into dangerous enclosures.
