OAKLAND, CA — An incident last weekend surely left other visitors wondering what in the world a man at the Oakland Zoo was thinking when he scaled a fence that separates visitors from tigers. He was thinking he wanted to retrieve his glasses, but had second thoughts when the tiger leapt from its perch and came toward him, growling.

But Patty Fayad, who captured the whole thing on video, said the man, who hasn’t been identified, intruded on the tigers’ home, which she told television station KTVU is “just not right.”

The zoo didn’t like it much, either. Officials said the tall fences far exceed Association of Zoos and Aquariums guidelines, and it is putting on extra security at the tiger exhibit.

“You cannot design for irresponsible and stupid behavior,” Joel Parrot, the zoo’s CEO and president, told television station KTO.

The video shows the man gingerly climbing over a 42-inch railing. He didn’t make it close to the 25-foot chain link fence that contains the cats before he decided it was a bad idea and retreated. And while he wasn’t in any mortal danger, the space between the railing on the viewing deck and the mesh fence is strictly off-limits to zoo visitors.

“The chain link fence keeps the tiger in, but then sometimes they think they can pet the tiger in which case the fingers go through the mesh and that’s when it can get dangerous for the public,” Parrot said.

Fayed and her husband, Sam, were visiting the zoo with their nieces when she pointed her camera phone toward the man.

“It really bothers me,” she told KTVU. “I love animals. They’re in their home.”

Fayed told the San Francisco Gate the man set a poor example for children.

“He could have called the zoo staff,” Fayad said. “Doing things like that — especially coming from an adult — is showing children it’s OK to do it when it’s not. People need to respect animals and follow the rules.”

She added: “Because of people like him, the poor animals get blamed and killed.”

A young man scolded the man for upsetting the tigers, Fayed said. Another guest agreed.

“A kid is way more important than some sunglasses or a phone,” parent Drew Gemberling told KGO, “but other than that — I’m not going in there, I’m not letting my kids go in there.”

In a statement, zoo spokeswoman Erin Douglas Harrison thanked guests for bring the man’s behavior to their attention. “We hope that all our visitors act responsibly, and don’t attempt to put themselves in potentially unsafe conditions,” the statement read.

Taunting tigers can be deadly. On Christmas Day 2007, one man was killed and two other visitors to the San Francisco Zoo were injured when they were mauled by a Siberian tiger named Tatiana. The tiger, which federal investigators said was provoked into crawling her way out of the enclosure, was shot by police.

Laurie Gage, a tiger expert who investigated the attack for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees zoos, said in draft of her report that Tatiana’s behavior was inconsistent with tigers.

“With my knowledge of tiger behavior I cannot imagine a tiger trying to jump out of its enclosure unless it was provoked,” Gage wrote.

Her statement was stricken from the report — which found that the fence did not meet zoo standards — because it was “irrelevant from and Animal Welfare Act standpoint,” David Sacks, a spokesperson for the USDA animal service, told the Associated Press at the time.

Below is Fayad’s video of the incident at the Oakland Zoo, via KTVU’s YouTube channel.

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