14 DAY TRIAL // Visitors at a Chinese zoo witnessed a horrific scene when a man jumped into the enclosure of a pair of white Bengal tigers, apparently in an attempt to feed them.
The incident happened over the weekend at the Chengdu Zoo, one of the biggest zoos in China.
The man, identified as 27-year-old Yang Jinhai, has miraculously survived his risky plunge almost unharmed, with minor scratches and bites, as reported by The Independent.
After entering the tigers’ cage, equipped with a backpack full of brown rice, the man began shouting at the animals and waving his hands to provoke them. One of the tigers backed down, but the other assaulted the intruder and dragged him around the enclosure.
While inside the pen, at one point, the man started sprinkling a reddish substance over a glass panel that surrounded the cage. It is believed it was ink, but no one knows what the purpose of such action was.
Luckily for him, the zookeepers reacted quickly and were able to save him after tranquilizing both tigers. The whole incident lasted around 20 minutes.
“He climbed up the outside of the cage and jumped inside expecting, I assume, that the tigers would pounce on him. Instead the two tigers, a male and a female, seemed more nervous than anything else and the female actually ran off,” said eyewitness Feng Lin to local media.
“Eventually he was attacked by the male where he was cut after being scratched and bitten before he could be rescued by zoo keepers,” he added.
The man was photographed by the shocked visitors, who say that they initially thought the man was an employee of the zoological garden.
“If it had been a Siberian tiger, the consequences would have been unimaginable,” a member of the zoo’s staff told a local newspaper.
According to his family, Yang had been suffering some mental health issues recently and had become depressed, but he is now receiving appropriate counselling.