The backyard tiger is an abomination. It is disrespectful of the world’s most impressive and well-known animal. People who keep tigers in their backyard are being self-indulgent idiots. Sorry if that is rude. I have to be rude because I am frustrated and fed up with reading about the misery that stupid people bring upon the mighty tiger which is brought to its knees and made vulnerable by humankind. I am referring here to America where there are thousands of ‘pet tigers’ languishing in crappy conditions and fed the wrong food.
UPDATE JULY 30TH, 2022: Please cosponsor HR263/S1210 the Big Cat Public Safety Act to end big cat abuse! This is a law which Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue wants introduced into America to stop the abuse of big cats in backyards by self-indulgent, ignorant pet owners who think they can convert a big cat into a pet in a cage. It is disgusting. Further Update: Carole says that “The Big Cat Public Safety Act passed the House today (278-134) on International Tiger Day in the Year of the Tiger!” Hurray. Well-done Carole.
RELATED: Carole Baskin is campaigning for the Big Cat Public Safety Act
Good night Big Cat Rescue Friends! π
Simba Tiger is so excited!
The Big Cat Public Safety Act passed the House today (278-134) on International Tiger Day in the Year of the Tiger!#GoodNight #BigCatRescue #BigCatPublicSafetyAct #BigCatAct #HR263 #Tiger @carole_baskin pic.twitter.com/Zs8CIWJnv2— Big Cat Rescue (@BigCatRescue) July 30, 2022
Note: This is an embedded tweet. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
A lot of casual tiger consumerism is by individuals who haven’t the faintest idea what they are getting into and it starts with something like..
“Oh, isn’t that tiger cub cute…”
Yes, he is very cute dear. Tiger cubs are extremely cute. Then they grow up. Then the problems start. Then the thoughtless person who “owns” the tiger can’t afford the $6,000 per year to maintain the monster in the backyard. Then the tiger becomes ill….and so on. One more neglected and unwanted tiger needs a decent home and is there one around? Probably not because there are too many idiots satisfying their self-indulgent hedonistic ways. And they have tigers to get rid off. There is not enough tiger sanctuary space left to accommodate this madness.
Unwanted tigers are shunted around America in the back of trailers looking for a home. When they are found a home, it seems only to be temporary. Wildlife sanctuaries are struggling to survive in the current dire economic climate in the USA. There are signs of improvement but let’s just say the picture ain’t that good.
How many tigers are there in Texas? We don’t have a clue because there are no records although permits are required. There is no federal system and there is no law regulating this human condition that treats tigers as if they were cars. It is almost certain that there are far more generic tigers (tigers of no breed or cross-bred) in backyards than there are in the wild. That is a frequently quoted “fact” but it is worth quoting because it shows up what we are doing with respect to wildlife. We are being disrespectful of it and using it up unsustainably.
Law
What can we do about it? Nothing really. There is a bill going through the America legislature. It is the Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act. It amends the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981. The objective, I am told is to “prevent private big cat ownership across the United States” (The New York Times). Great. Well intentioned and about time, I say. I have been ranting on about this for ages. I wrote an article on my blog site a long time ago.
The big problem with new legislation (new law in the form of a bill) is that it does not become law in the USA. I am told by the gov.track.us website that:
“Just 3% of all Senate bills in 2009β2010 were enacted..”
In layperson’s language it means that of all the new law proposed by senators etc. only 3 in 100 attempts to create new law were successful. Shocking? Or am I missing something? The problem of a paralyzed Congress split down the middle is well documented. The fiscal cliff is a case in point.
The current law on individuals keeping tigers (and big cats) in the USA varies tremendously from state to state as it is made at a state level.
Price of Tiger Cubs
The price of tiger cubs is indicative of the number of them in America. You can buy one for less than the price of a Maine Coon cat.
Tiger Parts
With such an excess of generic tigers sloshing around Middle America is it not conceivable that some of these tigers are killed to supply the tiger body part market in China? There is no evidence of it as far as I am aware but I feel confident that it happens. Irresponsible tiger ownership in the United States feeds an irresponsible attitude towards the tiger in other parts of the world.
I agree of course. There is something disrespectful and demeaning in keeping the tiger is a backyard zoo. Actually it is worse. It is plain cruel and immoral. Even mainstream zoos have a problem justifying their existence.
At the Bangkok zoo in 2005 had photographed myself with two full-grown tigers on a leash, myself seated behind the tigers, a normal photograph for tourists. In another park in Bangkok got myself photographed feeding a tiger cub,again, a common tourist photo in Bangkok. I did this for the experience of feeling the touch of an authentic tiger. Honestly, i felt sad for two majestic tigers being degraded to the status of pet dogs for tourist photos.As for the tiger cub that i cuddled and bottle fed, definitely will take its place as a pet tiger for tourist photos once grown.Agreed, the zoo makes its money from tourists through these few hand bred tigers that are photographed with tourists.It also gives a wrong impression of the ferocity and individualism of these majestic creatures as seen in the wild or large zoos.According to the media, the U.S.A has the largest number of captive bred tigers, a animal definitely not meant to be a house-pet akin to a cat.
This whole thing is literally and completely bonkers. What government in their right mind would even allow a private untrained person to ‘have’ such an animal in the first place. And how totally incompetent do you have to be to actually get one. It really is a side product of some kind of mental disease humans seem to have with regard to ownership and nature. I could think of nothing more idiotic than to want to actually posess a tiger based on the fact that you are in awe of them. Furthermore I could think of no law more stupid than one that in any way allows these idiots to ‘have’ one. It’s moronic, depressing and disgusting. Besides, it’s more than incredibly arrogant. There isn’t a word for that kind of arrogance, except maybe ‘God’.
When I finally decided to have 3 cats instead of 2, it was after months of consideration of how well I could take care of them and if it would have a negative effect on the first 2 etc. I was seriously unsure and went over it in my head trying to think if I should really not allow myself another, even though I really wanted a new friend for mine and just another cat and a new dynamic. It worked out very well indeed in the end. I think a lot of people aren’t even really able to own dogs since they are so needy and to be happy and well looked after you cant just walk them twice a day and leave them inside and go off to work. But all of these important and serious choices with long lasting consequences pale in compirism to the royal pillocks who want to have a tigerβ¦. in a houseβ¦.. in Americaβ¦. maybe there’s a big garden tooβ¦? Lets hope those people don’t reproduce, and lets hope the people who allowed it don’t reproduce either.
In Australia there’s something called the ‘Darwin Awards’ which are awarded posthumously to people who manage to lose their own lives in the most incompetent and stupid of ways – a Darwin award is given in view of the persons act of goodwill of removing themselves from the gene pool for the betterment of humanity. I just glanced at their homepage and it seems lately a lady was walking along a cliff edge that was fenced in for security reasons however she climbed the fence and fell off the cliff whilst trying to catch a feather. Perhaps the wanting of the ‘floating over the edge of a dangerous cliff feather’ can be aligned with the wanting of an ‘in your house and backyard awesome tiger’. I can just see the next possible Darwin award being awarded to a person who saw a really cute and fluffy tiger cub and decided to buy it for a few hundred bucks because tigers are so awesome and cool and stuff. Then the tiger grew up and one day a frying pan fell on the floor and the tiger got so shocked by the sudden noise it accidentally ripped his owner apart causing him to die immediately. The question here however would be as to whether the person really deserves the Darwin award or if in fact the tiger does.
Dan you are so right to say ‘grow up people’ As children we say ‘I want’ because we know no better, we see something beautiful and want it but we are usually taught we can’t have everything we want and that it’s sometimes not practical to have that something either, especially a living creature.
Adults who ‘want’ a tiger as a pet should be able to think ahead to the responsibility of having a wild animal in their possession, they should think could they care for that animal properly?
Many Americans don’t seem able to care for small cats never mind large ones, judging by the large numbers abandoned and killed in Shelters, many with problems from being cruelly declawed.
Education and animal welfare laws are very badly lacking there and there are too many cats suffering because of that fact.
Thanks Dan. I think you are correct. It is about people being more adult when making decisions. Thanks too for the extra information – nice.
People are foolish and uneducated about the dangers of an untrained individual keeping a wild animal like that as a pet. As a rule, tiger cubs can no longer be handled safely at the 12 week mark. Like kittens, their paws are gigantic, loaded with full size claws that they do not know how to fully control yet. They can cause a very serious wound without the human even seeing it. Their response is usually to slap at them and say no. You can imagine what happens next.
What about the man back east somewhere that had his cat get lose. The tiger took to the woods to hunt and came back home at night. The man couldn’t keep him in the yard. He finally had to confess to the authorities and it still took 20 days to find and capture the beast. They showed video of the cat in an iron cage. The man went to say goodbye and the cat clawed out at him. Thankfully, the video cut out there. The man survived, but was seriously injured.
The law in Arizona is setup so that we had all these side-of-the-highway mini-zoos back in the 1970’s and ’80s. Ben, the bear that played the bear on the tv series Grizzle Adams was one of these poor beasts. What ended up happening — as permits were denied — the animals ended up at one big wild animals/rescue zoo. They were so poor they had to ask the public to help build permanent quarters for all these animals on some donated land. They literally had just hours left to leave the O’Otham Indian land (Salt River Tribe) that they had been on. It worked out, but no without a lot of donations and hard work. Permits are hard to get now. Those animals made it, barely.
Grow up people.