Last Monday it was hit again in the Beekse Bergen. A 17-year-old German student got off the safari trail with two classmates and ended up in the cheetah enclosure. There he ended up between the jaws of the predators, until a caretaker managed to save him. The boy was taken to hospital with injuries to his arm and head. It’s not the first time the cheetahs have gone after human prey.
Perhaps the most famous cheetah attack is the one from 2018. A French family got out of the car not once, but twice, while that is absolutely not allowed in the safari park. The family was filmed by another motorist. The video shows the unsuspecting family being surrounded by the wild animals. One of them lashes out at a woman with a child on her arm, but the French all manage to reach the car unharmed.
Copy cat
A year later, in 2019, it seems as if a German family wants to imitate the trick of the French. They even get off at the exact same location along the route. “It seemed as if they deliberately wanted to imitate the French family,” an eyewitness told Omroep Brabant at the time. A zookeeper ordered the family to immediately get back into the car, which the Germans complied. It is not known if any cheetahs were in the area when the family exited the car.
To play
Things went really wrong in 2012, when the animals got a boy ten in their claws. Together with two mothers and another boy, he got out near the cheetahs. He made a run for it, signaling predators to give chase. The boy was grabbed by a cheetah that jumped out of the bushes. It bit him in the arm, but quickly let go. The mother seized her chance and was able to get her son back into the car. The child escaped with a flesh wound in his arm. According to a caretaker, the intention of the cheetah was to play and not to eat the cubs.
De Beekse Bergen warns visitors in Dutch and English with signs that everyone must remain in the car at all times, with the windows closed. In addition, there is also the so-called ‘cheetah grid’, which must keep the animals within their part of the safari park. The grid is six meters wide and is electrified. According to the zoo, it is likely that the German boys walked over it on Monday and ended up in the cheetahs’ enclosure.