An incredibly lucky zookeeper has narrowly avoided getting mauled by a leopard after being saved – by a tiger.
Eduardo Serio was playing with a group of lions at the Black Jaguar White Tiger Zoo in Mexico City when the leopard began creeping up behind him, reports The Mirror.
Eduardo can be seen fussing a young lion when the leopard – named Dharma – gets up and suddenly sprints towards the keeper – with him totally oblivious to the danger.
However, as Dharma charges towards Eduardo, a tiger named Aztlan, intervenes, stopping the leopard in his tracks.
Aztlan then wrestled Dharma to the ground, with the young leopard rolling onto his back as the tiger gives him what looks like a bit of a telling off.
The footage was originally uploaded to YouTube last October – but it has recently gone viral again after being posted to Reddit.
Although it’s nice to assume that Aztlan was intervening to save Eduardo from injury – or worse – not everyone is convinced the tiger was trying to save the keeper.
Mavin Marque commented:
Don’t be fooled. The tiger named did not purposefully save some human….he was more likely interested in playing just as much as the leopard.
The stupid human is just lucky he was there to receive the play. This is why you don’t treat these animals like small kittens.
They’ll fuck you up just in play and you were stupid enough to crouch down with the other pack. Don’t treat these large awesome animals like this and please, for fuck sake have more respect.
Which, to be fair to Mavin, is probably sound advice.
