Am I being unreasonable . . to wonder just how stupid some people can get?

Unbelievable!

I've seen similar in Canada with brown bears. Road signs telling people to stay in their cars but they still get out to film bears which are only a few metres away.

Aah let's get out and stroke the lovely cuddly cheetahs - what could possibly go wrong....!!

Could be because they have seen TV documentaries about these animals, filmed from a hide a mile away by experienced wildlife photographers with telephoto lenses the size of a Joddrell Bank telescope. It all looks so intimate, as though you could reach out and pat the ravening predator.

They think they can take the same pictures with their own little phone from a couple of yards away, and the cheetah/bear/lion/crocodile/rattlesnake will smile and pose attractively.

You can’t believe anyone would be so jaw droppingly an eejit though can you, as getting out of the car with big cats prowling around?

And they had a young child with them! These people really shouldn't be allowed to breed

Some people just can't seem to do as they're told.
There was a case a little while back where a woman jumped out of the car in the middle of an argument (and a safari park)
She got killed by a lion, I think it was.

Some more examples -

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/tiger-suffers-stress-attack-after-drunken-man-enters-its-cage-at-kiev-zoo-9581153.html

www.cbc.ca/news/trending/lion-tigers-gorillas-oh-my-1.3607381

abcnews.go.com/US/boy-fell-cheetah-exhibit-dangled-railing-zoo/story?id=30259586

www.thedodo.com/people-jump-into-zoo-cages-1523236714.html

Do you remember years ago, the little boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure, and was protected by the silverback?

Yes, I think Harambe was his name (the silverback, not the boy)

This idiot puts the elk and calf into a panic - then he videos the people in the car behind who are witnessing his stupidity. Why? What good does he think that does? www.youtube.com/watch?v=40brVnC8Vtw

I think Harambe was more recent, and he was shot. (The gorilla, not the boy)

Found it! The other one was in Jersey over 30 years ago, and the gorilla's name was Jambo. metro.co.uk/2016/01/21/boy-saved-by-huge-gorilla-30-years-ago-reveals-how-incident-shaped-his-life-5635889/

On a slightly different theme - last Sunday I watched some small boats together with a couple of big yachts go through a lock to enter a marina on the East coast. One of the small boats was a beautiful wooden painted sailing dinghy about 15' long with a young couple and a little boy age about 3 years old on board. Not one of them was wearing a lifejacket!

Absolute morons

Sadly in my area we see it frequently. I grew up an hour's drive from a national park in the Rocky Mountains. You would not believe some of the information the park had to give out because people were so foolish. A bear, elk, deer, or mountain sheep is a wild animal. They can be unpredictable. They can be dangerous. You would have goofballs getting out of the car to take pictures and film these things close up. The reality is that some of these animals are so large that even a seemingly innocuous action could cause injury or even death to a human.

Indeed one wonders if common sense enters the head of such people.
Then when tragedy occurs others are expected to risk their lives to dash in and rescue the child.
On a differing note however we have ourselves seen young children......often under seemingly the guidance of their parent.....go right to the edge of the walls dividing a roaring sea with massive waves......as the waves crash.
Yes most times they escape ...........just.......but again the question is why play with danger and what on earth are the parents thinking in allowing it???

Sadly there are those that never learn and never think that they might well be putting other innocent bodies in grave danger by their thoughtless acts.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I think!

Perhaps they were trying to win a Darwin Award. These are awarded to people who die as a direct result of their own stupidity. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards]

On a small scale I've been watching people's stupidity at the local tip. It's very well run but when a skip is full a big red X is put across it and a sign saying do not use. We were emptying tree trimmings into adjacent skips and someone came in wrong way through the exit and started emptying stuff into the full one. It happened on both occasions I was there this week. If they don't understand a big red X what hope is there for words saying don't feed the lions.
I was once on the back of an elephant looking at tigers in India and the stupid man next to me tried to attract the tiger's attention. Only time in my life I've said STFU.
Luckily that tiger had just killed something and was having a rest.

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Off you go to play Dorina
Reported

M0nica you beat me to mentioning the Darwin Awards :-)

There are some very strong candidates.

What makes me angry is when innocents are put at risk. Be they children or people who get called to rescue idiots.

Ho Hum

I saw this on a link last nightElegran and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I did notice the man running back to the car leaving the woman to pick up the child and also bat away a couple of cheetahs beside her.

They were all so lucky to escape but it annoyed me to think, should the cheetahs have attacked chances are they would have been shot as rangers tried to save the stupid humans.

You cannot win a Darwin Award if you also endanger the lives or kill innocent people