Superstitious villagers feared endangered Sumatran tiger was a shape-shifter, so they gutted it and hung it from a ceiling
There are only around 400 Sumatran tigers left in the world, meaning it is on the brink of extinction
A Sumatran tiger hangs, dead and disembowelled, from a ceiling in a public hall in a remote village in northern Indonesia.
A photograph shows the lifeless animal strapped to a wooden plank – and dozens of villagers crowded around to see it.
It’s not certain exactly why the critically endangered animal was slain Sunday in a village in North Sumatra, Indonesia, but local news reports say it had mauled at least one or two residents who had followed it to its lair – to determine whether it was a mythological, supernatural being.
The Jakarta Post reported that superstitious villagers feared it was a “siluman” or shape-shifter, and when rangers would not kill it, they took matters into their own hands and decided to kill it themselves.
“The tiger was sleeping under a resident’s stilt house when the people struck him repeatedly in the abdomen with a spear,” an official from the Batang Natal subdistrict told the newspaper about the slaying.
