A rare Siberian tiger that escaped from an animal park in China's northeast returned on its own after eluding authorities who spent two days trying to capture it, a police official said Tuesday.

The tiger, which bit a park employee during its escape Saturday, returned to the Siberian Tiger Park on Changbai Mountain in Jilin province on Monday, said the official in the nearby town of Erdao.

``It came back on its own,'' Yin said. He said park managers had put out cattle and sheep as bait, though he didn't know whether any were eaten.

The tiger hurdled the park's 4-meter-high (12-foot-high) fence about 3 p.m. on Saturday with the assistance of a pine tree, according to previous report.

The beast bit Jiang Fengbo, 22, who was picking pine nuts outside the park. He suffered injuries to his trachea and thigh and fractured vertebrae.

No one else was injured while the tiger was on the run, said Yin, the police official.

Xinhua said Sunday that dozens of police officers had the tiger encircled and that it had been shot and wounded. Yin had no details on the hunt, and it wasn't clear how the animal eluded police.

The Siberian Tiger Park, which opened in July 2002, is home to 12 adult tigers and four cubs.

The Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is one of the world's rarest mammals. Fewer than 400 are believed to survive in the wild - about 20 of them in China and the rest in Russia.

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