When predator befriends prey, the smart money is on a tumultuous end. And that's what happened to the Siberian tiger and the goat who was supposed to be his dinner, their zookeepers announced Friday.
Amur the tiger and Timur the tenacious goat are being kept in separate enclosures, according to the Primorsky Safari Park, after a breakup fight this week. No word on who is getting custody of their shared meal bowl.
The unlikely pair had captivated animal lovers in November, after the goat was placed in the tiger's enclosure as a meal. Instead, the goat fought back, and the pair began to play with each other in an unusual case of inter-species friendship. But the zookeepers had long warned that instinct might eventually take over.
"Timur went beyond all limits," the general director of the Primorsky Safari Park, Dmitry Mezentsev, wrote of the goat in a statement. "He pushed Amur away from their hill with his horns; he butted him with his horns and kicked him with his legs."
Then the tiger "rose and grabbed Timur by the neck as one would a kitten, and threw him up in the air," Mezentsev said, adding that he would not characterise it as an attack, just a "lesson" to the goat. Afterward, the zookeepers gave the tiger a live rabbit, which he killed and ate, Mezentsev said.
