12th April 2009

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This polar bear did some chomping

The newswires are furocious this morning with the story of a 32-year-old German woman who jumped into the polar bear enclosure at the Berlin Zoo. She was briefly mauled by one of the four bears in the exhibit, who left serious bite marks on her arms and legs, before zoo keepers dragged the woman out of the exhibit’s moat.

It’s not yet known why the woman launched herself into this den of danger. According to the London Telegraph, she had to climb over a fence, a wall and some prickly hedges to get in. A guy who did the same thing last December told zoo keepers he had been feeling “lonely.” (In that case, the bears were diverted with chunks of beef.)

For the rescue, zoo keepers threw life-saver rings into the exhibit moat to both distract the bears and hoist the woman out of harm’s way. Rescuers had made one unsuccessful attempt to lift her to safety when she fell back into the moat and the mauling occurred. Video footage from CNN is embedded below, and available here.

Knut, the adorable German polar bear cub who became a celebrity as an infant in 2007, was in the enclosure at the time, but was not the bear who did the chomping.

Update: The woman, identified only as Mandy K, was depressed over the loss of her teaching job, says her ex-boyfriend. Also, zoo security has revealed that at the time of Mandy’s rescue they were “moments” away from shooting the animals.

Tags polar bearsbearsBerlin Zooattacks