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Apparently this woman leapt into the Polar Bear enclosure at feeding time and was attacked (as can be seen on the video), while passers by attempted to distract the Polar Bears with flotation devices, etc. Although I think it’s more likely that she fell in there (you can clearly see that she is trying to get up the wall in the video, not stay in there), it’s a pretty amazing piece of footage.
I visited with the Polar Bears at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo quite a bit, and never really let it leave my mind that the cute think behind the glass would just love to kill me if it was hungry… I really hope this woman wasn’t stupid enough to think they were too cute, or was ill enough to select this as her method for suicide. If she did, she certainly seemed to have changed her mind after the first bite.
It turns out this was indeed a suicide attempt. She obviously just changed her mind when she discovered how much being eaten might hurt.
She is in a critical condition from severe bite wounds.
The worst part is that she could have easily killed these Bears with her actions. Keepers were apparently moments away from shooting the animals, fearing that may be their only option to rescue the woman.
Also, I found that she also had to climb a fence, push her way through a prickly bush, then vault the wall in order to jump into the water. It looks like there is a mere wall in the video, but that’s where people had gathered to try to help her – not where the public normally are allowed.