Meaning that roughly half of the states accept pet tigers on a legal basis. Tigers are surprisingly cheap to purchase as a pet. Typically people will purchase a female tiger, as the males tend to be more aggressive, more territorial, and more unpredictable in their behavior. This does lead to some questionable behavior regarding the treatment of male tigers that are born to a breeder. Despite this relatively cheap initial purchasing price of a tiger cub, the costs of keeping and caring for a wild tiger are extremely high.
A full-grown tiger requires around 6, kilocalories of food a day — that is about 15 pounds of meat! However, in the wild, tigers consume a wide variety of animals and plants, and therefore require a diverse diet to ensure they are receiving an adequately nutritious diet. This means that in addition to purchasing enough meat to support a tiger, various nutrients and nutritious additives must be purchased to add to food so that the tiger does not suffer from malnutrition and deficiencies.
In addition, one of the largest issues in keeping a tiger is the issue of space. A male tiger in the wild keeps a territory of around 40 square miles, while a female maintains around 7 square miles of territory. Regardless, few people own this amount of land, much less are even able to enclose a large enough space for their tiger to reside in.
The end result is that often tigers live in decrepit squalor, in tiny pens piled high with their own waste. Tigers living in tiny pens will quite literally lose their minds, becoming hyperaggressive and attacking anything that comes near their enclosure.
In the past 10 years, around 21 fatalities have been attributed to big cats. All zoological and wildlife institutions, however, are allowed to possess such animals with the proper permits. In January, he was sentenced to 22 years prison in connection to a murder-for-hire plot to kill prominent animal rights activist Carole Baskin. Tigers need to use their predator brains to catch, play, jump, climb, and explore, and a bored tiger will be an unhealthy tiger.
Zoos often use large plastic balls that tigers will jump on in pools and offer hanging containers with food inside as well and large tree limb apparatus areas to climb in and on.
Without complex enrichment regimes, tigers can and do get bored to the point of medical depression. The amount of food needed for a tiger will vary with gender and age, but an adult tiger may consume up to 88 pounds of meat at one time—antelope, gazelle, water buffalo, deer, fish, and any other creature they can get their opportunistic paws on are comprise a tiger's diet. According to the Smithsonian National Zoo, their tigers eat mostly ground beef.
Their diet is supplemented with "enrichment items," such as knucklebones, cow femurs, and non-live rabbits. The Big Cat Rescue organization advises that in most areas it is difficult to find a veterinarian who is willing or even able to care for a tiger of any age. They further report that a full 98 percent of all wild big cat species die within two years of being taken into captivity.
All tigers suffer from many of the same illnesses that affect house cats, such as feline distemper and rabies. It's important to immunize every tiger against these common, lethal diseases. Unlike its human counterpart, however, FIV is totally curable with treatment. If not treated, FIV can weaken the animal's immune system and make it vulnerable to a plethora of other contagious diseases.
Tigers are also susceptible to the much more serious feline leukemia virus FeLV. This virus produces a number of collateral illnesses in cats, including anemia, chronic infections, and other cancers. FeLV can be treated, but if it is allowed to develop into full-blown cancer it is almost always fatal. Most states have restrictions on owning many exotic pets including the big cats, especially around heavily populated regions.
Specifically, 35 states have a ban on keeping big cats specifically, while 21 states ban all dangerous exotic pets. Check the rules in your area before attempting to acquire a tiger or any other big cat. But enforcement is left to the state's counties, making it difficult to track unregistered tigers. This lack of oversight raises concerns about animals escaping, especially from a combination of the powerful hurricanes and storms that rake the region and often shoddy enclosures.
When a female tiger was found wandering the streets of Houston in , it turned out she had been evacuated from a nearby rescue farm because of intense flooding. But the person who had been given the tiger for safekeeping was not adequately prepared - and she escaped. Floods and hurricanes notwithstanding, Texas's climate is usually very amenable for tigers, meaning they can live outside year round, without the need for winter quarters, says John Gramieri, general curator at Austin Zoo.
He notes how Texas's enormous size, abounding in relatively cheap ranching land, also helps. Texas is also well-positioned for the cross-border trade in tigers with Mexico. Exotic animal seizures at the border used to be mostly birds and reptiles coming from Mexico, but the trade has reversed with mostly tigers and cats bred in the US being smuggled into Mexico. Most estimates of America's tiger numbers stem from a study by Brian Werner of the Tiger Missing Link Foundation, which estimated America had just under 5, tigers in zoos, sanctuaries and individual ownership.
The Feline Conservation Federation did its first big cat census in , and in completed a five-year follow-up to establish population trends. Why the decline? According to the Feline Conservation Federation, the dropping figures reflect an overall ageing population "as well as many facilities discontinuing the keeping of big cats". Animal welfare groups are also working to get custody of the animals as they hear of them.
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