Fun fact: An adult tiger can bite down with nearly 1,000 psi of force—roughly four times as much as a human male. It seemed relevant, considering we’re about to show you a video of a tiger ripping the bumper off a car with its jaws in a split second.
The incident occurred at Beijing’s Badaling Wildlife Park, which was caught in a storm of bad publicity last month when a female visitor to the park was killed and her daughter injured after a tiger attacked them when they climbed out of their car.
In the video, a white tiger strolls up to the white Volkswagen in which the camera operator is riding shotgun. The big cat pokes around the front end of the car for a moment—then, without warning, sinks its teeth into the driver’s side of the bumper and yanks it off in one fell swoop, prompting a brief shriek from a woman riding in the VW. The tiger wanders back into the woods, proudly toting its prize; the video then cuts to a close-up of the damage, revealing the tiger fang-sized bite marks on the recovered bumper.
According to the translation of the dialogue provided by The Mirror (hardly the most reputable of sources, we know, but our in-house Chinese-language translator called in sick today), the language of the car’s occupants matches their incredulous tone. When the man suggests calling his insurance company after seeing the big cat yank off his front bumper, the woman in the car teases him: “What are you going to say to them?”
A word of advice for the Badaling Wildlife Park management: We’re not exactly big cat experts, but maybe you ought to consider investing in some tiger enrichment supplies.
