State media reported that a zoo tiger in China’s southwestern Yunnan province bit a six-year-old girl to death on Thursday. According to a Xinhua story, the girl and her mother were posing for a photo behind the cat when the flash from the camera spooked the tiger and caused it to bite the girl in the head. In China’s zoos it is common for people to take pictures with tigers that are not kept in cages (pictured right). The tigers are normally just chained to something and are lying free out in the open. When the tiger clamped down on the six-year-old’s head, media reported that the Chinese zoo workers began to strike the tiger with “sticks and wooden stools” until the tiger let go. The tiger also bit the girl’s mother on the hand as she tried to rescue her daughter. The girl was rushed to a local hospital where she received emergency surgery, but sadly, could not be revived. The tiger was part of a “circus” that was putting on an exhibit at the zoo. The tiger was supposedly tame. As Chris Rock once put it, the tiger did not go crazy, it went “tiger.”

•Xinhua: Tiger Bites Girl to Death in SW China Zoo

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