SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco Zoo officials Thursday denied a report that Tatiana, the female Siberian tiger that fatally mauled a zoo visitor in December, may have been underfed.

The officials were responding to an in-depth KCBS radio report that indicated Tatiana's loss of 50 pounds since her arrival at the zoo from Denver two years earlier may have heightened her aggressive behavior.

On Dec. 25, after somehow escaping from her grotto, the tiger attacked and killed 17-year-old zoo visitor Carlos Sousa Jr. of San Jose and injured two of his friends, brothers Amritpal Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23.

A year earlier, on Dec. 22, 2006, former zookeeper Lori Komejan had been clawed and bitten by Tatiana during a feeding event and suffered serious injuries.

The KCBS report stated that Tatiana weighed 292 pounds when she arrived from the Denver Zoo in 2005 and just 242 pounds when she was shot and killed by police following the fatal San Francisco attack.

In a statement released this afternoon, zoo officials called the report "incredibly disappointing."

They asserted that Tatiana's necropsy report showed she was in "good nutritional status at the time of death."

"The animal keepers and veterinary caretakers at the San Francisco Zoo pamper and love these animals, as if they were a member of their own family," the zoo statement said.