Animal Workers in Peril

The Dangers of Working With Wild Animals

In 2010, Dawn Brancheau, a trainer at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla.,was grabbed by a killer whale as she stood in a wading area at the edge of his tank. Reports said she was grabbed by either the arm or the ponytail and dragged underwater. She died.

In 2007, a zoo keeper at the Denver Zoo, Ashlee Pfaff, was working in the Feline Building, in a secure area behind the exhibits. She opened the door to the jaguar exhibit, without first checking that she knew where all the big cats were. A male jaguar was very close to the door and he attacked. She was mauled, while coworkers tried to drive the cat away with a fire extinguisher. When that was ineffective, they shot the animal. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

In 2006, a tiger named Tatiana in the San Francisco Zoo got hold of a zookeeper by reaching through the bars. It reportedly chewed off one of her arms. The keeper was a talented artist who drew animals. A year later, the same tiger escaped its outdoor pen, and killed one teenager and mauled two others.

Those are not the only recent incidents, and they are not just the cats and the whales involved either.

In 2003, a mother elephant named Ivory at the Indianapolis Zoo attacked a zookeeper and gored him in the leg when she heard her two-year-old calf cry out as it was being separated from her for training.

These incidents beg the question: How dangerous is it really to work with captive, wild animals as a trainer or a zookeeper? Are there enough safety protocols in place so that injuries are rare? Or are these animal workers stepping into peril every day they go to work?

Dangerous Place to Work

Insurance Journal called several zoos, insurers and agencies to comment, but many were reluctant to address the dangers of working with wild animals. The only zoo willing to participate was the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the trade group that represents the nation’s most reputable zoos and theme parks, was responsive to the Insurance Journal’s query, but spokesperson Steve Feldman said the association had no information on injuries or risks. But that does not mean information is unavailable.

Ricky Langley is a medical epidemiologist with the state of North Carolina. He is interested in injuries in those who work with animals, particularly veterinarians but also farmers and others, and that has led him to exploring injuries in zoos.

Based on that work, he said: “I think a zoo is definitely a dangerous place to work.”

In 1998, Langley surveyed 315 members of the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians, asking about their injuries. He found that 61 percent reported having sustained a major animal-related injury, where a “major” injury was defined as an injury requiring medical treatment that was more than just applying topical antibiotics. Eighteen percent of the veterinarians had to be hospitalized as a result of their animal-related injury, and 22 percent of the zoo veterinarians had received at least three major animal-related injuries in their career.

The injuries reported included from wounds due to crocodile and cougar bites, osteomyelitis (bone infection), septicemia (a disseminated infection spread throughout the blood stream) due to animal bites, a smashed testicle from a horse kick and a head injury from a camel kick.

The most common injury sustained by the veterinarians was a needle stick injury, experienced by 87 percent of the veterinarians.

While a needle stick injury can be serious (if it causes an infection or the veterinarian has a reaction to the agent inside the syringe) the most important and common injury with regard to workers’ compensation insurance were back injuries. Sixty percent of the veterinarians reported a work-related back problem and/or pain caused by a repetitive activity.

Specifically, 20 percent of the veterinarians reported pain from repetitive activities, and 55 percent reported a back problem caused by having to move the large animals or other large objects. The numbers add up to more than 60 percent, because some veterinarians reported both. Eleven percent reported lost work time because of a back injury resulting from lifting or moving.

In the scientific paper Langley wrote about his survey, he compared the zoo veterinarians with other veterinarians in other fields. He said the frequency of injury was fairly comparable among veterinarians regardless of their practice setting, although specific types of injury can vary.

He did not compare the veterinarians with other industries, but one can do a kind of back of the envelope comparison using what Langley found.

Construction is generally considered the type of work with the most injury. According to U.S. Department of Labor figures, about 15 percent to 16 percent of workers in the construction trades have an injury every year, and about 3 percent get an injury that requires time away from work.

The veterinarians in the survey were asked if they had ever had injuries during their career, not each year. However, the average number of years that they had been in practice was about 10 years. Sixty-one percent reported a major animal-related injury, which averages out to about 6 percent per year. Then, there were 55 percent who reported a back injury. Those figures combined would add up to about 11 percent per year. And, in addition to those types of injuries, the survey recorded that 40 percent of the veterinarians reported an injury incurred during necropsy, mostly cuts from the scalpel, and 30 percent reported acquiring a zoonotic infection, often a skin infection.

The injury rates for the veterinarians, therefore, might be somewhere near that of construction workers.

The State Compensation Insurance Fund of California insures zoos and wildlife rehabilitation facilities and trainers for motion pictures. State Fund spokesman Benjamin O. Edokpayi was not specific on details, but he said that animal trainers generally are charged less for workers’ compensation insurance than are construction workers.

“In workers’ comp, the exposure associated with an operation is reflected by the rate charged and that rate is based on past losses,” Edokpayi said. “From this more objective perspective, it could be argued that animal training is less dangerous than most construction work, as the rate for the classification most animal trainers are assigned to is significantly lower than that of virtually all construction classes.”

Langley, however, still said that working in a zoo is not for the faint of heart, and the rates charged for animal trainers generally might not exactly reflect the risk associated with working with the exotics in a zoo.

“If you get injured [at a zoo] it may be by a large animal and it is probably going to be more serious,” he said.

Animal behavior experts say that wild animals are so dangerous because they can be so unpredictable. A trainer may think they have a bond with an animal, and develop some affection for an animal over time. But the animal does not necessarily look at it that way. Moreover, actions a trainer or keeper might not consider provocative can trigger instinct in the beast, with tragic consequences.

Roy Horn, of the Las Vegas magic-show duo Siegfried and Roy, was mauled by a tiger he had worked with for years. SeaWorld’s Brancheau had worked with the orca that killed her many times before the accident.

Experts also note that an animal held in captivity is an animal just waiting for any chance to escape. All zoos and most animal theme parks, for that reason, keep guns on the premises.

Most Dangerous Animals

The big cats are among the most dangerous animals in the zoo, Langley said. But there is another most dangerous animal whose identity is more surprising. It is the elephant.

People often think of the elephant as generally placid, imperturbable and lumbering. But elephants are large, which makes them intrinsically dangerous, and male elephants go through a periodic hormone cycle known as must, when their testosterone levels rise as much as 60 times higher than normal. An elephant in must is highly aggressive; it may even try to kill people.

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, since 1990, elephants have killed 13 people and injured 135 people in the United States.

Killer whales may be exceptionally dangerous too. The Brancheau death at SeaWorld prompted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate killer whale training and the safety of keeping them in captivity. It also brought to light a previous incident, and a previous report from the California OSHA.

In November 2006, trainer Ken Peters was in the killer whale tank at SeaWorld in San Diego, preparing to be launched into the air on the nose of the whale Kasatka. But Kasatka heard a distress call from her calf, reportedly, and she took Peters’ feet into her mouth and shook him and kept him under water. Peters survived, but he did have a broken foot and puncture wounds.

Cal OSHA investigated and although it found no fault, it did issue a report that predicted a killer whale might kill a trainer soon. Over the years, trainers have been getting into the water with killer whales for tricks more and more frequently. But SeaWorld objected to the report. In response, Cal OSHA took the report back and rescinded much of the report, including the statement making the prediction. Cal OSHA said its agent did not have the expertise to make that kind of statement.

The Brancheau death also prompted USA Today to try to collect a list of cases of captive animals at theme parks and injuries to trainers. The paper collected 17 cases, and of those, nine involved killer whales. Moreover, OSHA did not investigate the majority of those incidents because the injuries inflicted did not meet the OSHA threshold, and that includes a case at SeaWorld in San Diego were a whale swam up and grabbed a trainer by the foot and pulled her into the water, breaking her arm in the process.

Workers’ Comp

Damian King, the director of human resources at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, said his zoo pays $270,000 a year for its workers’ compensation insurance. The zoo employs around 300 persons, including 80 animal keepers.

“It’s a significant expense,” he said. “Zoo-keeping has a lot of injury associated with it – a variety of injuries.”

Zoos like Woodland Park stress safety with workers, he said. His zoo only hires persons with college degrees to be keepers, and there is continual training, including ergonomic training done with outside experts brought in. New keepers do not get to work with dangerous animals.

Still his zoo has its share of injury incidents. “Most of our claims are strains and contusions, and fingers caught in doors,” he said.

Among the recent injuries at Woodland Park are a prairie dog bite on the hand and a snake bite to the head. The zoo has had a couple of dozen back strains that needed attention in the past three years, he said.

The Woodland Park Zoo’s experience seems fairly typical, as events at another zoo where incidents have been catalogued appear comparable. Following the 2007 jaguar attack at the Denver Zoo, the zoo came under intense scrutiny. As a result, the zoo reviewed the records it had for all animal-inflicted injuries at the zoo going back to 2002 and released the information to the Rocky Mountain News.

Apart from the one major incident, the review suggested there is a norm of a fairly constant rate of serious, but not severe incidents.

The zoo reported 45 injuries during that five- to six-year period. The injuries included nips and bites, and butts in the head and chest by horned animals. One zookeeper got pinned behind his wheelbarrow by a reindeer. Another experienced a sprained wrist trying to separate an amorous male red river hog from a female hog.

The sea lions bit workers seven times in 2004 and 2005.

Finally, a gorilla once wandered out of her enclosure when the door was left open and had to be shot with a tranquilizer dart.

Zoo officials told the newspaper that they wished there were no incidents. But, spokeswoman Ana Bowie said: “It reinforced the fact that our people work safely, considering the number of animals we have and the close contact with them on a daily basis.”

Topics Workers' Compensation Training Development Construction