A black jaguar named Samba died Monday at Project Survival's Cat Haven after being bitten by a snake, even after staff rushed her to an emergency veterinary clinic and tried to save her with antivenom and medicine.
The death of Samba, who was 14-15 years old and born at the facility, is now the second cat bite at the site this year. That is why the case landed so hard: it was not just a bad injury, but a rare one that ended in the loss of an animal the staff had raised from birth.
Staff first noticed Samba favoring one leg. Her paw had swollen to nearly twice the size of the other paw, and puncture wounds were found on her foot. She was sedated and taken for treatment, and testing indicated she had been envenomated. Hours later, her heart stopped. Veterinary staff performed chest compressions and gave medication in an effort to bring her back, but Cat Haven later announced that she had died.
Executive Director Dale Anderson said big cats usually avoid snake bites because they can see a snake coming and run away. This time, Samba did not. That is the part that makes the case hard to dismiss as routine bad luck: a prey response that normally protects the cats did not protect her, and the bite proved fatal.
Anderson said staff have already caught and relocated about 14 snakes away from the cats this year, and that this was the first time the facility has had two cat bites in the same year. He said the goal is not to kill the snakes because they live there too, but to move them to another part of the property away from the cats. The unanswered question is the one the testing did not settle: what kind of snake bit Samba.
Cat Haven is a wild cat conservation facility in Dunlap, Calif., and the spike in snake encounters has made this year unusually busy for staff. For Samba, though, the answer came too late. The bite was found, the venom was treated, and the effort went on for hours, but the jaguar born there did not survive.
