From picky tigers to armed teenagers

Tigers that refused to eat a man were smart to avoid the calories

Scientists say that many fussy eaters are picky about their food for entirely genetic reasons, such as because they are tigers. This was the case in China recently, when a man jumped into a tiger cage at a Chengdu zoo and spent 20 minutes “attempting unsuccessfully to persuade the big cats to consume him”.

Tigers’ preferred food is hoofed animals, says Wikipedia. I grew up thinking tigers ate breakfast cereal, but this was due to a massive campaign of disinformation by Kellogg’s, a devious Western food company. (One day I’ll take out a class action lawsuit.)

Yet tigers do sometimes eat people, so why not this guy? I threw this question open to the gang at my local rice-box eatery. Now I know my friends aren’t the sharpest tools in the box, but they made the good point that it is impossible to actually act edible.

“You either look good to eat or you don’t,” one said. He gave the example of Obama, who looks bony and unappetising, compared to the succulent Jennifer Lawrence, “who no man can look at for more than five seconds without his mouth watering and his hands reaching for the salt and pepper”.

An alternative theory came from a news junkie who said that the tiger may have considered the man too greasy to eat. A report in the China Post said Taiwan health authorities calculated that 45 percent of people who celebrated the lunar New Year holiday put on 1.7 kilos of fat each. Extrapolating this to all celebrants of that festival, that means 1.1 billion kilos (or 2.1 billion pounds) of adipose tissue were added to the weight of humanity. That is a lot of human fat: I mean, we’re talking Several Rob Fords, maybe seven or eight.

A guy who uses the Internet to get news said Asia was being swept by a mysterious “sleeping epidemic” which may have affected the tigers. I looked that one up to find a report that an excessively sleepy teenager in Kazakhstan somehow managed to infect others, leaving doctors puzzled.

Do Kazakhstan doctors not have teenagers? They are a strictly nocturnal species, like bats, owls and Lindsay Lohan. If my daughter doesn’t get 20 hours of sleep a day, she's impossibly cranky.

Which is why I never allow her to have heavy weapons. It's too bad that a parent in Pakistan did not set similar boundaries.

Two teenage buddies in Islamabad had an argument about which TV channel to watch last week, according to a report in the Express Tribune sent in by a reader. The dispute could have led to nothing more than the usual had not the parents of one boy allowed him to have his own AK-47. Shooting broke out and blood was spilled.

This astonished me. Who on earth would give a young male a loaded machine gun? I mean, other than everyone in the US states of Wyoming, Alaska and Montana, most people in parts of downtown Manila, all the folks in Serbia, the entire population of Cyprus, everyone in Yemen et al?

Avoid armed teenagers. You’re safer sitting in a tiger cage.

(The writer is an Asia-based frequent traveller)