According to media reports, a tiger attacked a man in Indonesia and injured his head. The Sumatran tiger entered a camp of plantation workers in Sumatra’s Riau province on Saturday while they were sleeping, the Antara news agency reported on Sunday, citing the head of the local nature conservation agency.

When the man woke up, the tiger was only about two meters away from him, it was said. The worker shouted to warn his colleagues, then the animal pounced on him. The man managed to push the cat away with both hands, the news agency reported, but the animal had already injured his head with its claws. The wounds were sewn up with 20 stitches.

So it is with the Sumatran tiger

The Sumatran tiger is a subspecies of tiger. In addition to poaching, the destruction of natural habitats, for example through palm oil plantations, has severely decimated their numbers. On the island of Sumatra, whose area roughly corresponds to that of Germany, Austria and Switzerland together, there are still around 400 specimens in the wild.

Fatal encounters between humans and tigers occur again and again. Presumably starving animals repeatedly attacked plantation workers and gold miners. In August, a Sumatran tiger killed a plantation worker in Riau province.