SPOILERS AHEAD!
If you have Netflix or have been on any social media during the last two weeks, you’ve probably heard of or watched the infamous documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. The documentary was filmed by Eric Goode, a man who had no idea what kind of drama he was getting himself into.
The documentary’s main purpose was slightly missed because of everything that occurred with Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin and others. At the end of the series, there was text that went across the screen describing that more than 10,000 tigers live in captivity in the U.S., while only 4,000 remain in their natural habitats. Baskin said she is a huge campaigner for The Big Cat Safety Act to pass and uses her platform to fight for this act to pass.
I find her and Exotic both to be enormous hypocrites in all of this drama. They both talk about caring for the tigers and criticize each other throughout the bulk of the docuseries. Baskin ran a “cat sanctuary” where cats roamed around free, but this wasn’t the case. The cat’s cages were relatively small, and her volunteers were never paid which doesn’t make her much better than Exotic. Exotic, on the other hand, was found guilty of killing five tigers, and lured young men to his zoo who all began as workers, and as Joe groomed them and purchased them drugs and expensive cars, both young men married him.
While both individuals were wrong in their actions, many others in the documentary haven’t faced persecution when they were just as guilty. For example, Doc Antle, a man who owns a private zoo in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, used Exotic’s tactics and lured young women into his zoo. Similar to a cult, he made these women call him Bhagavan, which means “Lord”. He also made the women wear certain uniforms to appear sexy to all customers. In reality, those uniforms were for his own purposes. Besides engaging in the Big Cat Trade, Antle paid his workers $100 per week for 12+ hour days with no breaks, practically slave labor.
Unfortunately, privately-owned zoos like Antle’s and Exotic’s have been protected because the Big Cat Safety Act has not passed. The Big Cat Safety Act was introduced to Congress in March 2017, yet it seems not much progress has been made. According to the Animal Welfare Institute, the Big Cat Safety Act would eliminate the possession of lions, tigers, leopards and other types of big cats, of individuals who are not licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With this act passing, all private zoos will be out of the question and will be forced to shut down.
The reason these privately-owned zoos bring in such a profit is that they provide an experience that most people would never ever get: one-on-one time with a baby tiger. PEOPLE interviewed a woman named Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the U.S. She said these baby cubs are solely bred for profit purposes. Upon birth, they are taken away from their mothers and used for playing, feeding and pictures for the zoo attendees. The zoo owners can rack up the prices for these babies ranging from $50 to a whopping $500. After the cubs reach 12 weeks, they are too big to be used for these purposes and have been executed (as Exotic did with the five tigers that were found on his property).
Besides private zoos, people across the U.S. have easy access to big cats. I did a google search for “exotic big cats for sale” and I was shocked by my findings. At least three websites came up that were offering exotic cats. The most concerning website that came up was one coined as “Planet Exotic Pets: EXOTIC KITTENS.” Any average person with a phone or computer can look at these websites and purchase an exotic cat, and that’s the scariest part. These websites need to be regulated and shut down. Big cats are being put at risk, and the general public is also at risk. A good example of this was in the October 2011 incident in Zanesville, Ohio. A private exotic animal owner, without any warning, let go of all his big cats into the public. Law enforcement had to get involved, and fortunately, none of them suffered, but 49 of the animals were slaughtered due to this owner’s stupidity.
With the feud between Joe and Carole, there wasn’t really a clear winner. Exotic paid millions of dollars for his lawsuit, Baskin was almost murdered in a murder-for-hire plot, and so on. However, the ones who suffered in all this were the big cats. It is imperative that legislators take this documentary as a wake-up call to help protect big cats and shut down these private zoos.
