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HONG KONG – A zoo keeper in Japan has died as a result of a white tiger, his supervisor said on Tuesday.
Zoo goaltender Akira Furusho was found Monday night bleeding from a cage at Hirakawa Zoo in Kagoshima town in the south of the country, Kyodo News reported.
Riku, the five-year-old male tiger who threatened Mr. Furusho, was sedated by the relief that arrived at the scene. Furusho, 40, was later declared dead at the hospital.
Akinori Ishido, director of the zoo, told reporters Tuesday that no one was around at the time of the episode "and we can not imagine what happened".
"It is extremely unfortunate to lose staff," he added.
Kyodo reported on Tuesday that the police were investigating how the zoo cared for Riku and his three other white tigers. The news agency said that around the time of the attack, the staff planned to move Riku from a display cage to his bedroom.
Mr. Ishido told reporters that staff members were not allowed to be in cages with dangerous animals, but that the rule had obviously been broken, reported the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
The zoo opened in 1972 and has more than 1,000 animals, including koalas, polar bears and red pandas, according to its website. Kyodo reported that the Riku white tiger was nearly six feet long and weighed about 375 pounds – as much as some sumo wrestlers.
The Hirakawa Zoological Park was open Tuesday, Kyodo said, but access to the area near the tiger kiosk was restricted.
The episode was not the first tiger attack on a zoo keeper in Japan.
In 2008, for example, a Siberian tiger attacked and killed Atsushi Ito, a zoo keeper who had cleaned his cage at a Kyoto zoo, the country's former imperial capital, Kyodo. He died of a broken neck.
The police later stated that she thought that Mr. Ito had not properly closed the cage doors after pulling the tiger to a neighbor leaving a chicken inside.
White tigers are Bengal tigers – not albinos or a distinct species, as is generally thought. according to the Wildcat Sanctuary, a big cat rescue facility in Minnesota. They are produced when two Bengal tigers with a recessive gene that controls the color of the coat are raised together.
Makiko Inoue contributed to the report from Tokyo.
