LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ — An Arizona woman knows the dangers of going too far to get a selfie with one of the world’s most exquisite creatures. She was injured after climbing over a low barrier fence Saturday at Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium & Safari Park in Litchfield Park to get a picture in front of the jaguar exhibit when one of them reached through the wire mesh and clawed her arm, the zoo said.
The woman, who hasn’t been identified, received stiches to close her wounds, but was back at home later Saturday, Wildlife World said in a tweet Monday. She met with zoo officials and offered a “sincere apology” for her role in the incident, the park said.
The jaguar, a female believed to be 4 or 5, has temporarily been removed from the exhibit as the zoo investigates what happened. But the zoo said the cat wasn’t at fault and won’t lose her life because of the incident.
“We want to thank everyone who supports Wildlife World and our decision not to euthanize the jaguar after Saturday’s incident,” the zoo said in the tweet.
The jaguar never left her cage, zoo officials told Fox News.
Adam Wilkerson and his mother, Michele Flores, heard the woman’s screams and helped rescue her, CBS News reported. The jaguar’s claws were retracted and “definitely outside the cage,” Wilkerson said.
Flores told CBS she pushed a water bottle against the cage, distracting the big cat, which let go of the woman and grabbed the bottle with her mouth.
“At that moment, I grabbed the [woman] around the torso and pulled her away from the cage, and [the shirt] unlatches from [the jaguar’s] claw,” Adam Wilkerson, Flores’ son, told Fox. “The jaguar just goes after the bottle.”
The woman involved in the incident “feels horrible about the bad publicity the zoo is getting regarding the incident,” a zoo spokesperson told KTVK. To CBS News, the injured woman described the incident not as an “attack,” but a “crazy incident.”
Zoo director Mickey Ollson said the incident illustrates the importance of safety barriers — and the responsibility of zoo visitors not to breach them.
“When people do not respect the barriers, there’s always a a chance there might be a problem,” Ollson told CBS.
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“There’s no way to fix people crossing barriers,” Ollson told news station KTVK. “That happens occasionally. And we put substantial barriers there and if people cross them, they can get in trouble.”
The same jaguar clawed another zoo visitor last year. That person was shooting video of the jaguars.
“She had scratched a person once before when they crossed the barrier,” Ollson told KTVK, noting that person’s injury was not as serious.
Jaguars, the largest cat species indigenous in the Americas, are extremely powerful and “just one swipe with the paw can do a lot of damage,” Humane Society of the United States president and CEO Kitty Block told CBS.
“It’s also really hard on the animal,” she said. “It’s really stressful.”
Getting a viral selfie has become ingrained in digital culture, but Block said it comes at “too great a cost.”
“It could have been much worse … for the animal and the person who tried to intercede and help her,” Block told CBS.
HSUS said a statement to KTVK:
“When various types of exhibitors promote all sorts of close encounters with wildlife, people get the mistaken idea that wild animals are approachable. Throw in a healthy dose of poor judgment, and incidents like this are bound to happen. We urge the zoological community exhibitors to set a higher standard to protect people and to respect wildlife from a safe distance by doing away with public contact opportunities with wildlife of all species.”