A 19 year-old man thought twice about climbing into the lion enclosure at the Parque Zoobotanico Arruda Camara in Joao Pessoa, Brazil on Sunday, turning around and back up the tree he had used to ingress the pit containing several of the African predators when a female immediately lunged at him in a threatening manner and quickly shattering his delusions of harmony with the animals.
Per NBC News, Gerson de Melo Machado had previously been arrested for trying to climb into a plane’s landing gear believing it would take him to Africa so he could live out his dream of becoming a lion tamer. So the wacky, dangerous behavior wasn’t terribly out of character, which Machado snapped out of when he saw the lioness meant business at the zoo on Sunday… Slightly too late.
Machado was quickly mauled to death by the lioness. Zoo officials closed the gates for the next few days to conduct a security assessment. The lioness, not named in the article, will not be euthanized as she’s healthy and had not exhibited any aggressive behavior outside this incident – in which a predatory pack animal reacted pretty naturally to a breach of its territory by an unfamiliar intruder.