​The Greatest Urban Animal Chases in History

Yesterday, a young tiger was spotted wandering around some tennis courts in Montévrain, France, a town about a half hour west of Paris. The response has been quick and exhaustive, with police launching a helicopter search and urging residents to stay inside.

What's doubly weird about this loose Parisian tiger is that it seems to have materialized from thin air. Both Disneyland Paris and Parc des Félins, a park for big cats located southwest of Montévrain, denied that the tiger belonged to them.

It does seem a little hinky that there is a big cat preserve so close to the sightings, but according to the park officials, the 180 cats at the Parc des Félins are all accounted for. Maybe the tiger escaped in some kind of Jurassic Park "life finds a way" situation? We can only speculate, and we will, rampantly.

As cinematic as it seems to have a tiger on the prowl outside of Paris, it is far from the first loose animal that has made international headlines. One of the most outrageous stories from the last few months, for example, involves a bunch of hippos that belonged to Pablo Escobar running loose around late drug lord's ranch in Antioquia, Colombia.

Escobar originally purchased four hippos for his opulent homestead, and now there are anywhere between 50 and 60 descendents of that batch. Local authorities say that most have them have remained in their original paddocks, but at least a dozen have escaped into the wilderness surrounding the area.

This means that Antioquia has a population of invasive, inbred, rapidly multiplying feral hippos, which sounds like one of the most dangerous problems a place could possibly have. One tiger does not seem like a big deal stacked up against Escobar's liberated hippo gang, which is reportedly led by an enormous male named El Viejo, or The Old Man. Somebody make a gritty biopic of this hippo already.

Another loose animal that deserves their own movie is Evelyn, a gorilla that has escaped from the Los Angeles Zoo on no less than seven occasions, often in tandem with another gorilla named Jim.

In October 2000, Evelyn made one of her more famous solo escapes by using the vines around her enclosure to climb out. A hasty evacuation ensued, which meant that Evelyn had the whole zoo to herself for just over an hour. Naturally, she went to check out the elephant, giraffe, and orangutan enclosures, to see what the view was like from the other side of the fence. She was eventually tranquilized, and passed out in the men's room.

A video of Evelyn's escapades. Credit: YouTube

Incidentally Evelyn was just one member of an illustrious club of escapees from the Los Angeles Zoo—apparently 35 other animals got loose between 1998-2003 alone. Even before that spate of breakouts, there was a famous case in the 1970s concerning a wolf named Virginia who actually climbed a tree to freedom, and perhaps lived out the rest of her days happily in Griffith Park.

But perhaps the mother of all loose animal chases—and a notably creepier one—occurred all the way back in eighteenth century France. Between 1764 and 1770, a number of gruesome maulings occurred around the former province of Gévaudan. Some records claim that the death toll reached 113, and that the attacks predominantly came in the form of a good old-fashioned throat rip.

The descriptions of the offending animal, known as the Beast of Gévaudan, vary wildly, which has fueled speculation to this day. Hunting down the loose maneater required royal intervention, with King Louis XV sending several professional wolf hunters to the region to handle the problem.

Some claim it was the king's Lieutenant of the Hunt François Antoine who ultimately responsible for bringing down the beast, but local farmer Jean Chastel is also sometimes credited for the kill. But regardless of what the beast was or who killed it, the whole incident is an easy frontrunner for the title of Most Epic Loose Animal Chase.

It remains to be seen what will happen with the loose Parisian tiger. But one thing's clear: if there was ever a nation with experience handling rogue predators, it is clearly France.