Copenhagen zoo staff shot a polar bear with rubber pellets in order to rescue a mentally unstable man who jumped into the bear's enclosure on Wednesday.
The 28-year-old man only suffered minor injuries after he jumped the fence of the zoo's Arctic Ring habitat, fell seven meters into the security pit of the polar bear enclosure, made his way out of the pit and approached the 625-kg polar bear, The Copenhagen Post reported.
"He went up to the bear and it examined him by sniffing him and shoving him, and he sustained some superficial injuries," zoo spokesman Jacob Munkholm said, according to Agence France-Presse.
The incident, which took place Wednesday afternoon, prompted zoo officials to scream and shout at the 10-year-old mammal in an effort to distract it before other zoo staff arrived at the scene with weapons and started shooting at the polar bear with rubber bullets. They rescued the man once the bear returned to its cage, The Guardian reported.
"It didn't take more than a minute and a half from the alarm going off when he entered the facility until our guards... shot rubber bullets at the bear and it moved away from him," Munkholm said before adding that a group of school kids who witnessed the incident were offered psychological help at the zoo.
The incident follows two years after Siberian tigers attacked and killed a 21-year-old man after he scaled a fence and jumped into their enclosure after breaking into the zoo, according to the Daily Mail.
