I honestly feel the biggest problem here is ignorance. These goof balls were sadly uninformed about tigers. There is a often held misconception that zoo animals are tame. The ignorant public watches them play - and maybe watches the handlers work with them, and they assume they can jump in and play too - or that they can tease them, like they do the family cat.
If these people where just trying to "play" with the tiger, i feel bad for them. I assumed their motivation was to harm him/her.
People being overwhelmed by the splendour of tanimals and forgetting their hazard, is a regular problem for Zoos. I think people get overwhelmed by transcendant emotions, and go temporarily insane. Have you read about Jerusalum Wall syndrome? "Normal" people visit it, and have "breaks with reality" regularly enough that staff are trained in how to deal with it.
I read one story of a mother visiting a polar bear, and handing her infant child to it...I don't think anything good happend to that kid...It's just that these animals are so wonderful, so beautiful, so innocent, and "helpless" (overall) before us....*crunch*
On the other hand, wild animals and people can have real bonds. DId you hear about that man that lives with wolves and feeds them, FROM HIS MOUTH, like a mother wolf. Amazing....Or a man who adopted bears and raised them from babies. I am thinking about getting monkies, but I'd only do it if these animals could be "happy" in an indoor/outdoor semi-wild setting, and it didn't involve getting animals in an unethical way.
