In late August, Born Free USA launched a database of what it describes as “deadly and dangerous captive wild animal incidents” that have occurred since 1990. There have been over 1300 of them, believe it or not. The database is available at http://www.bornfreeusa.org/reports/exo_incidents.php.

You can browse the database by state, date, species, type (animal death, human death, attack resulting in injury, and so on), and facility type (basically zoo, circus, or pet.) You can also do a keyword search. I found the browsing more useful.

Looking at all incidents in Texas found 93 results. Results show the date and place of the incident, short description, and the species involved. Click on the description for a more details, source of the information, and a map. Not all of the incidents are of the “animals attack!” type. On the first page of the Texas results I saw two incidents of elephants dying in accredited zoos of unfortunate but not unusual causes. Born Free USA offers a search widget for embedding the search on other sites.

Born Free USA is an animal advocacy organization, and you will see proselytizing on its Web site. But in addition to the exotic animal incidents database, you’ll also find a database of animal-related legislation, both state and federal level.