Welcome back to Scary Animal Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to Western Pennsylvania.
Not the mountains though, to The Pittsburgh Zoo, to the African Painted Dog exhibit to
be precise. This exhibit attracts thousands of onlookers who admire the coloration and
athletic build of the wolves of the African Savannah.
Now, I know that these dogs are not wolves, but they are the closest thing that sub saharan
Africa has to a wolf. African Painted Dogs hunt in packs and pursue their prey for very
long distances frequently. They also use strategies similar to a wolf pack. Their differences
are that Painted Dogs are much smaller than wolves and they have about ¼ of the bite
force in their jaws compared to wolves. One more interesting fact about African Painted
Dogs is that they have never been known to kill a human being in the wild. Of all the
animals in Africa, the Painted Dog has never been known to be hostile toward human children,
elderly, weak or single people in the bush country.
At the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium, the sleek forms in the Painted Dog exhibit have limited
space, consequently they don’t do the running they do in the wild. However, they do have
a pattern of travel in the exhibit which they do tend to cover in a routine pattern. Many
captive animals rock back and forth or pace across their enclosures and back to give themselves
stimulation and break up their boredom. They don’t have to hunt for their food and there
isn’t any possibility of external packs vying for their hunting ground, so they tend
to wander about on their interior trail system. On November 4th, 2012, Jason & Elizabeth Derkosh
and their 2 year old son Maddox were looking down into the Painted Dog exhibit and watching
the dogs interact with each other. The primary fence had a gap in it which allowed people
to lean over the exhibit to get a better look at the dogs, but doing so meant disregarding
the clearly posted warning signs forbidding this. There was a safety net designed to catch
items from falling into the pen and the exhibit had passed all 35 safety inspections from
the United States Department of Agriculture since it opened in 2006.
There were some complaints from interior sources though. On at least 6 occasions zoo staff
and volunteers had raised concerns about a small child slipping through the opening and
into the exhibit. In fact, on at least three different occasions incidents of parents dangling
their children by their arms into the exhibit or children dangling themselves over the edge
were noted and reported on meeting notes. These incidents were reported months apart
and never received serious consideration from a decision maker at the zoo. Elizabeth and
Maddox were clearly oblivious to the staff concerns expressed during these meetings.
Elizabeth and Maddox were admiring the beauty of the painted dogs together, as she held
him in her arms. As they approached the opening in the fencing, Elizabeth held her young son
up on the railing of the observation deck. Maddox lurched forward causing her to lose
her grip on him and sending him plummeting into the exhibit. He tumbled several feet
before he landed on the safety net intended to prevent similar catastrophe’s. The only
problem was, instead of the net absorbing his energy it sent him rebounding upward and
down into the dog pen. It was designed to catch small items like a cell phone or sunglasses,
not a young child. Maddox had fallen a combined 14 feet in the
fall, but was conscious after he hit the ground. All eleven of the African Painted Dogs in
the exhibit immediately swarmed him. They bit him about the head and neck ferociously.
Elizabeth screamed for help and started to climb into the exhibit to save her baby, but
onlookers restrained her. She could only watch while the dogs attacked her son. A nearby
police officer ran over and shot one of the painted dogs in a vain attempt at rescue.
The pack of dogs eviscerated poor Maddox, rupturing and piercing his organs. The dogs
dismembered Maddox so quickly that there was nothing that could be done to save him.
The veterinarian at the zoo indicated that employees should not risk harm by entering
the enclosure to retrieve his body as little Maddox was clearly dead. The zoo staff eventually
recovered his remains which were sent to a coroner for analysis. The coroner's report
indicated that there were 46 bite injuries on his neck and head alone.
When asked for a comment on the situation, renowned animal expert and enthusiast Jack
Hannah reported that African Painted Dogs were extremely aggressive in his interactions
with them. He filmed many episodes of his television show in Africa and indicated that
even if there were police officers present at the moment, there would have been nothing
that would have saved little Maddox from the dog's jaws.
During the subsequent lawsuit that was filed by the Derkosh family, it became known that
the dogs had escaped their enclosure at one point, sending the zoo into lockdown until
they could be rounded back up. The dogs did not attack anyone at that time nor did they
act aggressively toward anyone. The zoo claimed that they had not received any complaints
about children dangling off the rail into the exhibit, nor parents doing the same. They
also said that they had a crisis plan in place to deal with scenarios like this. The lawsuit
was settled for an undisclosed amount and the African Painted Dog exhibit was replaced
with a Cheetah exhibit soon after this event. The questions I am left with after this report
is, why did the dogs behave so aggressively toward Maddox when they hadn’t been aggressive
toward people before? Was it territorial? Was it a sort of frustration derived from
their captivity or the exhibit they had to occupy? Or, do humans have their behavior
all wrong? Is there behavior typical for a predator fighting for its survival? Are the
dogs actually considered wild still even while in a zoo? Should we expect them to behave
differently than they would or might in the wild once they are a zoo? The glaring irony
of this story is that the wild dogs are not known to predate on humans at all in their
natural environments, but the first ever human death attributed to their jaws occurred once
they were exhibited in a zoo. Please post your comments below in the comment
section and remember little Maddox and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
Thank you for watching this very sad episode of Scary Animal Attacks and please be safe,
no matter where you are, as you are a very important part of the human community.