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Brut America
  • 3/25/2025
"If you live in Texas, you might find out that your neighbor owns a tiger."

These species are protected all over the world. But in the U.S., big cats are a business like any other.

Brut nature investigated.

Category

🐳
Animals
Transcript
00:00If you live in Texas, you might find out that your neighbor owns a tiger.
00:11This seems crazy, and it is crazy.
00:21They're not kept track of very well, but we estimate that there is 5 to 10,000 tigers
00:31in captivity, along with thousands of other big cats.
00:34Once you open that number up to all big cats, including lions, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs,
00:39cougars, and hybrids of all those species, you're talking about numbers in the tens of
00:44thousands at least.
00:46This is a massive problem.
01:00We do have laws against international and interstate trade of tigers.
01:06It's illegal under the United States Endangered Species Act, but there are no federal laws
01:11against big cat ownership.
01:13That's a good boy.
01:15Oh, I gotcha.
01:17I gotcha.
01:41In some states, depending on local laws, people have them in their backyards as pets.
01:53There's a very small number, just a couple of hundred out of the 5 to 10,000 that do
01:58live in accredited AZA zoos.
02:02Unfortunately, the majority of these animals are in very substandard conditions at roadside
02:09zoos and private menageries.
02:39Roadside zoos and cub petting facilities can charge anywhere from $10 for a photo with
02:44a big cat to $500 or more for a special play session.
03:05Many of these cub petting venues crossbreed tigers and lions to create ligers, tigons,
03:14sometimes then breeding them back again to create liligers or li-tigons.
03:21All of these animals exhibit serious health problems.
03:24These are chimeras that do not appear in nature.
03:28They're strictly created to attract tourists.
03:32People who own big cats seem to do so out of the desire to have something that nobody
03:38else has.
03:39They're often typically people with very large egos who enjoy showing off on how they can
03:47control wild animals who most people would rightly fear.
03:53Regulese, look what I got!
03:55Easy does it!
03:58Woo!
04:20The incident sent the community into a lockdown and local officials were forced to shoot and
04:26kill all of the big cats.
04:41Tigers are not animals domesticated with hundreds or thousands of years of breeding in captivity.
04:48These are wild animals.
04:49They can grow to be 200 kilograms or more.
04:51They are not pets by any stretch and private ownership endangers both the people and the
04:56tigers that they own.
05:07We see time and time again poor nutrition and poor veterinary care just simply because
05:12it's too expensive.
05:14These animals end up suffering a lot of metabolic diseases, a lot of nutritional diseases and
05:19it's simply because of the way that they've been kept.
05:29We saw tigers that were horribly cross-eyed so badly that they stumbled over things.
05:36Their vision was terrible.
05:37Their spines were so warped from poor calcium and poor nutrition that they almost looked
05:43like camels.
05:44The conditions that many of these animals live under were also really disturbing.
05:49Filthy, small enclosures, injured animals with open wounds and no vet care.
05:58Anytime you see an exhibit where you are given the opportunity to touch or come into direct
06:03contact with a big cat, that should be an absolute red flag and you are patronizing
06:07an anti-conservation, anti-animal welfare, private menagerie or irresponsible zoo.
06:13If they don't want to walk, pop them in the ass and make them walk.
06:17Okay?
06:21Sit down.
06:33Some breeders mass breed females who are forced to pump out two to three litters a year compared
06:40to one every two years in the wild.
06:43Exhibits like these give people the opportunity to see the animals even closer and to have
06:47a more personal experience with them.
06:49And everybody loves a cute little baby tiger.
06:51A roadside zoo breeds, pulls cubs from their mothers at birth, hands them around to tourists
06:58for heading, bottle feeding, photo ops, until they reach the age of about four months.
07:05And then they've timed out.
07:07They're too big and dangerous to pet and they're discarded.
07:14It's a big question what happens to them.
07:17And we have seen in some situations that they're killed.
07:21Many of them then end up in sanctuaries, which do not breed, do not have hands-on contact
07:27with those animals.
07:28They keep them for life, give them proper nutrition and vet care.
07:32Really important distinction.
07:34Some may be sold into the private pet trade to some consumers who may or may not be well-intentioned,
07:41but either way are not equipped to care for an animal of that size in wild nature.
07:45It took me about 20 seconds today to find white tiger cubs for sale online for only
07:51$2,000.
07:52Maybe a little bit more than you'd pay for a dog, or a purebred dog.
08:11The tigers at these roadside zoos are heavily inbred, unhealthy, and they're crossbreeds
08:24of the five subspecies of tigers.
08:28Many of them are Bengal-Siberian mixes.
08:31Some are even more mixed.
08:34They're mutts.
08:35They're crossbreeds.
08:37So they have absolutely no conservation value.
08:41No captive-born tiger has ever been reduced successfully into the wild.
08:45It's just not happened.
08:46It's not been done.
08:48We don't need to.
08:49There are tiger populations in the wild, and the best way to conserve them is to protect
08:53them in place.
08:54Edding zoos have to have this stock of cubs that are less than four months old.
08:59What happens to them when they're more than four months old?
09:01Well, we don't really know, but we do know that at least some of them are being killed
09:05and getting sold on the black market.
09:07Supporting that trade and poaching are the primary driver of decline of tigers in the
09:11wild.
09:12A number of non-profits in the United States have done a really great job investigating
09:17and exposing the dark side of this industry.
09:19You cannot reprimand a cat while the public's around.
09:23That happens behind the scenes.
09:26Now many people are coming to understand that we do have a big cats crisis here in the U.S.,
09:31but there are far too many tigers and other exotic helix being bred and kept in captivity.
09:40People can help by never patronizing facilities that allow the public to hold, pet, swim with,
09:47ride, photograph with, or otherwise interact with wild animals.
10:01The Big Cat Public Safety Act is federal legislation that's pending in both chambers of Congress
10:14right now that would ban the private possession of big cats and direct contact with big cat
10:20cubs.
10:21The Big Cat Public Safety Act would work to eliminate this vicious cycle of breeding and
10:26discarding tigers and other big cats because there wouldn't be such high demand for cubs
10:32all the time.
10:33What we would like to see is an end to the breeding, selling, and trading of wildlife
10:37for private ownership.
10:38We want to see better regulation of our zoos and of our sanctuaries, and we want to see
10:42the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act and other federal regulations that will help
10:47protect all animals in the home, in zoos, in sanctuaries, and end a ruthless trade that
10:53is based off of the exploitation of wild animals.