Young fan said: “We met one of the Sheikh’s sons & he took us back to the palace!” ?. He was mooching around the area where the tournament is taking place and the Sheikh’s son invited them to the palace (I guess one of them) and at the palace was a menagerie apparently of various animals including lion cubs and monkeys. It looks like great fun, and I think the idea behind the Sheikh’s invitation was a bit of good public relations to try and nullify all the bad. And there has been lots of bad because of the poor human rights in Qatar. There will also be poor animal rights as the latter follows the former which leads nicely to the abuse of lions as shown in the infographic below.
For me and for animal advocates, keeping lions as pets is not good animal welfare. These billionaire Arabs are a major contributor to the multi-billion-dollar wildlife trade business. For example, where does the lion cub come from? Was he/she torn from their mother at an unnaturally early are? It happens.
Here are two videos which tell the story.
It is bad to treat wild animals as pets. It is self-indulgent and it fosters an entirely damaging relationship between wildlife and humans. It promotes the idea that humans have dominion over animals as taught by the Bible. It promotes the idea that humans can use animals for their entertainment. This leads to abuses and often there is poor husbandry of the animals in these private menageries because of a lack of knowledge and facilities.
The illegal trade in wildlife such as lion cubs is associated with other forms of criminality such as the drug trade. But this sheikh seems to be immune to the laws of Qatar preventing the ownership of exotic big cats as pets.
India’s much vaunted Project Cheetah ill-conceived and being killed off by red tape
Infographic on wild cat species in Africa, S. America and S.E. Asia
Carole Baskin to close Big Cat Rescue (BCR) in Florida and sell the land
Note: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified.