Selfie responsible for jaguar attack

When will the madness end? Sadly, never. Yet another person has been injured, and thankfully not killed, all in the pursuit of a selfie. This time, a woman was attacked by a jaguar while taking the photo after she crossed a protective barrier. The attack occurred on Saturday evening as the woman stood near the fence of the jaguar enclosure.

Fortunately for the woman, her injuries were non-life threatening as the claws did not sever any major arteries in her arm. The incident occurred at Wildlife World Zoo in Litchfield Park, Arizona. Following the incident, the woman returned to the park to apologise, and said that she “"feels horrible about the bad publicity the zoo is getting regarding the incident". A statement that the zoo tweeted, “At no time was the animal out of its enclosure ... please understand why barriers are put in place.”

According to a witness, Adam Wilkerson, who was quoted in a report on CNN, he could see the claws embedded in the woman’s flesh. "I saw the other girl up against the fence with her arm caught in the jaguar's claws." Quick thinking by Wilkerson’s mother, who shoved a water bottle into the enclosure, resulted in distracting the jaguar which then released the woman’s arm. Wildlife World Zoo tweeted on Saturday that the jaguar would not be put down as a result of the incident.

Meanwhile, in another report, India has been revealed as the world capital for selfie deaths. It states that selfie culture plays a significant role in India, including in politics. Since 2011, more than 250 people from around the world have died in incidents involving selfies. In their study, Selfies: A Boon or Bane? published in 2018, researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences found that more than half of the deaths occurred in India. The majority of the so-called "killfies" the researchers identified were caused by drowning, being hit by a train or car, or falling from a great height. The number of actual deaths from selfies could in fact be a great deal higher. The study did not take into account the countless near-misses.

 

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