Hamilton Zoo's male tiger Oz has been named as the tiger who attacked a keeper, killing her, on Sunday.

The senior zookeeper killed by a tiger at Hamilton Zoo on Sunday morning had worked there for more than 20 years.

She was identified by police late on Sunday as Samantha Lynda Kudeweh, 43, of Pirongia.

Her family had been advised of her death, they said.



On her biography on the Hamilton Zoo website, she is pictured face-to-face with a tiger separated from the animal by a cage.

Hamilton Zoo Oz, a Sumatran tiger at Hamilton Zoo, shows off his strength as he lifts a buoy containing over 70 litres of water out of the water.



Samantha Kudeweh with a tiger at the zoo.





Kudeweh wrote about her background on the site, saying she had spent eight years at Auckland Zoo, two years at Melbourne and Werribee Zoos.

She said her favourite part of her role was the "opportunities to interact with other species one to one, but there is a down side and that is having to say goodbye to animals. That part never gets any easier."

Kudeweh also wrote that her favourite animal was the rhino - "but I also have a soft spot for whoever is behaving."

BRUCE MERCER/FAIRFAX NZ Oz has been named as the tiger who attacked and killed a keeper on Sunday.

She said her most memorable experience during her time at Hamilton Zoo was working with baby rhino Ubuntu, who was born blind, in his first few weeks.

He "needed lots of help until his eyes cleared and he could start to find his mum on his own and feed himself," Kudeweh wrote.

READ MORE:

* Alone with the tiger

* Previous attacks at New Zealand zoos

A tiger attack saw Hamilton Zoo locked down on Sunday.

WORKED WITH CUBS

In November 2014, Kudeweh described the birth of Oz and female Sumatran tiger Sali's two cubs as a career highlight.

It was the first time she had had the privilege of working with tiger cubs, and in April she asked zoo visitors to name them.

BRUCE MERCER/FAIRFAX NZ Hamilton City Council chief executive Richard Briggs, Senior Sergeant Mike Underwood and Hamilton mayor Julie Hardaker give a press conference at the zoo pavilion.

Kudeweh said there were initially concerns about pairing Sali and Oz but it was "love at first sight".



"Oz is very experienced and he's a very tolerant and nice male tiger. It was lovely for Sali to meet a male like Oz in those circumstances."

Oz is Hebrew for "strength."

Kudeweh also urged zoo-goers to take an interest in conservation of the species.



"We're hoping that people put a little bit of effort into finding out about Sumatran Tigers and some of the threats that they're facing."

INDUSTRY IN SHOCK

A tearful Wellington zoo chief executive Karen Fifield said on Sunday evening before Kudeweh was identified that the death had left the industry in shock.

"We're all pretty tight-knit in the zoo community."

She said her staff would support their Waikato peers.

"We're obviously very concerned about our colleagues at Hamilton Zoo. That's our priority today to offer to do all we can to support them."

She did not know whether the keeper was in the tiger enclosure. Wellington Zoo did not allow keepers to share a cage with their tigers.

"We don't go in with our tigers at all. That's our policy."

Asked about other zoos in New Zealand, Fifield said: "Other people have different policies and I'm not about to criticise them."

CRITICALLY INJURED

Emergency Services were called to the zoo just after 11am to treat one person reported to have been critically injured after being attacked by a tiger.



Senior Sergeant Juliet Burgess, Waikato District Command Centre said "sadly the staff member who was attacked by the tiger has died at the scene".

"This is a tragic incident," she said.



"It is too early to determine exactly what's happened."



Hamilton Police were working with Hamilton Zoo staff and Worksafe NZ to investigate.

At a press conference this afternoon it was confirmed that the tiger who attacked the keeper was Oz, a tiger who was brought to Hamilton Zoo in 2013 from Auckland Zoo as part of the Global Species Management plan for Sumatran tigers.

Hamilton City Council chief executive Richard Briggs, Senior Sergeant Mike Underwood of the Hamilton Police and Hamilton mayor Julie Hardaker gave a short press conference at the zoo at 2pm, where Underwood confirmed the zookeeper was dead by the time police arrived.

Briggs said the zoo would be closed until at least Thursday while investigations were under way.

TIGER COULD BE EUTHANISED

He could not rule out Oz having to be eventually euthanised as a consequence of the attack. For the meantime he and the other tigers were all being "securely contained".

There had been no visitors near the enclosure at the time and at no point was any member of the public in any danger from the tigers.

He declined to give details on how the attack happened and whether anything could have been done to foresee the tragedy.

It was the first fatal incident in the zoo's history. The site would be blessed sometime between now and Thursday, he said.

"We are deeply saddened ... We have spoken to the staff and offered our support. They are devastated. The whole zoo is a really tight-knit family."

Mayor Hardaker said it was "a very sad day". "There is a very close staff community here at the zoo."

The zoo has five Sumatran tigers. As well as Oz, they have Mencari, Sali and 11-month-old cubs Kembali and Kirana.

He was paired up with Sali and the cubs were born in November of 2014.

The Sumatran tiger is a rare sub-species of the tiger and only 500 exist in the wild.

The sub-species is only found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Do you know more? Contact us newstips@stuff.co.nz

A map of the zoo showing the tigers' enclosure.

International zoo consultant Tim Husband said the tiger would not be put down unless it still posed a threat to human life.

Tigers have a natural instinct to react to quick movement, he said.

"What a lot of people fail to understand is that even though these animals are in captivity they are still wild and not a domesticated cat."

Husband said Hamilton Zoo was professionally run and the death of the keeper was a shocking reminder to all that work in the field.

"The zoo community is a small one and in most cases we do know each other or someone that works in the same zoo. New Zealand and Australia more so."

VISITORS RUSHED FROM ZOO

Visitor Dave Rich was at the zoo on Sunday when he said he was rushed out by keepers.

"Zoo keepers came up and sort of said everyone has to kinda get out, and they seemed a bit panicky so I thought maybe an animal escaped, but they guaranteed an animal didn't escape."

He said he had seen the tigers between 45 minutes and one hour before the evacuation.

Hamilton Zoo's tigers in their enclosure earlier in the week.

"[The tigers] looked fine. There was a keeper in there who opened up the gate so the tigers could leave the inside area to go outside, but that's all I saw."

PREVIOUS INCIDENT

It's not the first time a keeper has had a potentially lethal encounter with a tiger at Hamilton Zoo.

In 2013 a keeper walked 10 metres into an enclosure she thought was empty before finding herself alone with a five-year-old female tiger.

When the tigress spotted the keeper she ran "playfully" up to the keeper and swatted her gumboots, before the keeper, who didn't panic, returned to the keeper gate and exited the enclosure.

At the time the Zoo said in a statement that a gate had mistakenly been left open.

The tragedy follows the death of lion keeper Dalu Mncube in May 2009 at Whangarei's Zion Wildlife Garden, who was fatally mauled by a white tiger. The 260kg tiger was shot dead shortly after the attack.

In April 2012, visitors and staff watched in horror as zoo keeper Dr Helen Schofield was killed by an elephant at Franklin Zoo. She was killed when 39-year-old African elephant Mila picked her up after Dr Schofield went into its enclosure.

TIGER HISSED AT VISITOR

Hamilton woman Healie Hall, 21, went through Hamilton Zoo's Face2Face tiger encounter on Friday - two days before the attack.

The experience involved bottle feeding three tigers - Kirana, Kembali and their mother Sali, through their cage.

Hall said both her and the keeper were always separated from the tigers by a cage, and she felt "completely safe" the entire time - even when one of the male cubs hissed at her.

"The keeper knew exactly what they were doing.

"The father [Oz] and the male [cub, Kembali] were not that friendly. The male kind of hissed at me a little bit through the fence.

"The keeper had said [Kembali's] probably going to let you know this is his space.

"I guess I kept in the back of my mind it's a tiger and it's a wild animal, and it's going to defend its territory.

She was puzzled as to how the attack could have happened, based on what the zoo had told her.

"I'm kind of confused how this happened, because the keeper told us not once is the keeper in the same area as the tigers."

David Rowe arrives at Hamilton Zoo with flowers on Sunday after hearing about the attack. Photo: MIKE MATHER/FAIRFAX NZ