Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonliner
However it is a tad more difficult for the critter to get a running start via a water filled mote. Unless by "mote" they mean deep cement trench.
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Yes, that is frequently what a zoo means when they say moat.
And if the tiger successfully jumped over the moat then it doesn't really matter if it had water it in or not.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of the San Francisco Zoo. It has been improving but it still has too much of the old style concrete exhibits for my happiness (though not nearly so horrible as the Sacramento Zoo). Zoos are a net good, in my opinion, but I think they should be run on a model where easy viewing by the public is of secondary importance.
That is one of the reasons the Washington Park Zoo in Portland (I refuse to go along with the name change) is one of my favorites. Many times an animal has been unviewable because they're in the back of a large enclosure behind some tree or log. Sucks for me, but I'm glad for the animal.
I'm not too bothered by the tiger's escape. It is horrible but **** happens and any containment system is going to occasionally fail (in 40 years no tiger had ever jumped over that wall, so apparently it wasn't a very big risk). I'm more bothered by the fact that police from outside the zoo were on scene before any keepers from the zoo itself. And that it took so long for them to determine if any other tigers had escaped so that police and paramedics could behave appropriately.