“Timur kept butting Amur, stepping on him and occasionally pushing him off the hilltop… Amur tolerated Timur’s antics for a long time. Finally running out of patience, he grabbed Timur and, after giving him a little drubbing, tossed him down the slope. If he had really wanted to kill the goat he would have done it a long time ago,” Dmitry Mezentsev, the director of the Primorsky Safari Park, told RIA.
“I wonder how come the tiger had been putting up with the goat’s arrogant behavior for such a long time,” he added.
According to Mezentsev, the incident happened on January 26.
“Right now Timur is under the care of the park’s veterinarian. He is in shock, with a couple of marks left by the tiger’s fangs visible on his back, but no serious injuries, no fractures whatsoever,” Dmitry Mezentsev added.
The park’s management has yet to decide whether to put Timur back into the enclosure or spare him the risk of any further bodily harm.
Late last year the animal park’s authorities gave the goat to the tiger in his cage as a meal but instead of gulping it, the tiger seemed to have developed a bonding with the goat.
The pair turned into a huge tourist attraction for Russians and the development of their relationship, which involved tiger Amur giving up his bed to goat Timur, with the videos of their peaceful cohabitation going viral on the web.
