A catastrophic and unprecedented scenario. This Sunday morning at the Thoiry zoo, in Yvelines, a 37-year-old woman who was jogging found herself inside the wolves’ enclosure. Three of them bit her “on the neck, calf and back”, according to a source close to the matter at AFP. She was seriously injured.
The jogger was in an area prohibited to pedestrians. “She left her lodge to go running and actually crossed the enclosure of the American reserve which is normally reserved for cars,” Christelle Bercheny, president of the Thoiry zoo, told RTL.
The victim was rescued by caregivers before being treated in critical condition and taken to hospital. His days are not in danger. The causes of the accident remain unknown at this time.. Was there a failure in the marking? Did the person knowingly enter the enclosure? An investigation has been opened for “unintentional injuries”. She was entrusted to the Mantes-la-Jolie Research Brigade.
“We cannot compare wolves which are in the wild and live in their living space to wolves living in a restricted space”, explains to RTL Bertrand Sicard, president of FERUS, a national association for the protection and conservation of a certain number of animals, including the wolf. “In a park, the animals, which are used to seeing human beings pass by all day, are no longer afraid of man (…) But a wolf never completely domesticates itself“.
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