If you’ve spent any time on social media over the last week or two, you may have seen memes and posts about Tiger King, a new documentary on Netflix about the strange life and eventual downfall of Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic.
Joe Exotic is the former owner of Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. At its peak, the park housed hundreds of wild animals, including more than 200 big cats. In addition to allowing large groups of people into the park to gawk at the animals and to eat pizza made from expired supermarket meat, Joe Exotic would also breed big cats (mainly tigers) and pass out cubs – some merely a few days old – for petting and photos, both in the park and at malls and other venues around the U.S. He also broadcasted his own internet show – Joe Exotic TV – in which he railed against the animal rights community for working to shut down his park, often punctuating his points with gunfire and explosions.
Much of the documentary is concerned with Joe Exotic’s odd history, personality, personal ambitions (he ran for governor of Oklahoma), hateful vendettas, and the assortment of friends, employees, and intimates he gathered around himself at the park.
But, beyond the strange particulars of the life of Joe Exotic lies Tiger King‘s real story: that of heartless animal abuse and commodification.
Here are five important takeaways:
1. Wild Animals Do Not Belong in Captivity.
The first takeaway from Tiger King is that wild animals do not belong in captivity and no form of captivity can ever replace conditions in the wild. For instance, in the wild, tigers are a long ranging species, with territories that can span up to 650 km sq (400 mi sq). And, they live largely solitary lives, avoiding one another for the most part. The documentary reveals conditions at Joe Exotic’s facility that are all too common to roadside zoos: animals packed together in small enclosures, fighting with each other over hunks of meat and jockeying for space and attention.
We watch, too, as the animals’ fortunes rise and fall with those of the park. When Joe Exotic runs low on money, food becomes scarce for the animals, their enclosures fall into disrepair, and some are forced to endure a traumatic and stressful journey to a new location.
And, Joe Exotic’s facility is not even the worst of them. The Cricket Hollow roadside zoo, recently shut down after years of animal abuse complaints, demonstrates just how cruel captivity can be. Animals at Cricket Hollow lived in cages with rotten food, feces, dirty, standing water, and, sometimes, even the decomposing bodies of other animals. One baboon even died from repeatedly banging his head against his enclosure wall after being separated from his mother.
Born Free USA welcomed five monkeys from Cricket Hollow into our primate sanctuary, offering these animals a second chance at life. Yet, the scars of past traumas do not fade so easily. Marlin, our new male baboon resident, came to us desperately needing a root canal due to a lifetime of poor medical care. Mrs. Wilkin, the elderly macaque, suffers from arthritis and every long bone in her body is deformed, likely due to being taken from her mother at far too young an age and subsequently fed an inadequate diet. The other macaque, Anna, exhibits stereotypic behaviors caused by the chronic stress of captivity.
While the documentary leaves the conditions of the animals at Joe Exotic’s park largely unexplored, we can only assume that the animals experienced similar mental and physical suffering due to the unnatural stress of captivity.
2. Captive Breeding Is about Profit, Not Conservation.
Throughout the documentary, Joe Exotic and the other exotic animal breeders interviewed for the film constantly cite conservation as a driving motivation both for their menageries and for the captive breeding of tigers. We need to breed animals in captivity, they say, in order to conserve the species! This is, of course, patently false. Wildlife conservation is about conserving species in the wild, in their natural habitats, not breeding animals to live in cages thousands of miles away from where they would naturally roam free.
In truth, captive breeding is about profit, plain and simple. Joe Exotic himself states that he could sell a tiger cub for around $2,000, a major source of revenue for the park. What is more, the fact that Joe and others like him breed ligers – half tiger, half lion hybrids that do not exist in the wild – further demonstrates that preserving “nature” is not their true priority.
There are currently more tigers in captivity in the U.S. than exist in the wild. This trade in tiger cubs does absolutely nothing to protect tigers in the wild, grow wild populations, or conserve their natural ecosystems. Joe Exotic and other captive tiger breeders are motivated by a desire for cash, not conservation.
3. Cub Petting and Wildlife Selfies Are Cruel.
In addition to breeding tiger cubs for sale to private buyers, Joe Exotic would also breed cubs for cub petting and photography events, both at his park and at venues across the Midwest. Tiger King is full of footage of Joe Exotic passing tiger cubs around to park visitors, letting each person handle the animals and snap flash photos in their tiny faces. These events are extremely lucrative and, when he realized that he could earn even more money by taking this show on the road, Joe loaded cubs and other animals into a truck and hauled them across the country for weeks at a time.
Behind these events, marketed as wholesome family fun, is a truly ugly reality. Cubs are taken away from their mothers shortly after being born in order to get them accustomed to being handled by people (in one particularly disturbing scene, we watch as Joe uses a metal pole to drag a newborn tiger cub – just a few moments old – across gravel and under a mental fence to his waiting hand). This separation is extremely stressful for the young animals and being taken from their mothers robs them of the chance to learn important social behaviors and develop emotionally.
And, when baby animals used for petting and photo opportunities inevitably grow up and become too large, strong, and unpredictable to handle, they are commonly drugged in order to render them sedate enough to continue to be around humans safely. Other times, having outlived their economic usefulness, they are simply euthanized. One less mouth to feed.
4. Getting Close to Wild Animals Is Dangerous.
Tiger King also demonstrates the inherent danger of getting close to wild animals. In one harrowing scene, we watch as a zoo worker has her hand ripped off by a big cat. In another, we watch as Joe fires a gun into the air to scare off a cat who had begun pawing at and biting his shoe while Joe was walking through the animal’s enclosure. We also see footage of a child visitor to the park crying because the animal he was petting just bit or scratched him, drawing blood.
Wild animals are just that – wild – and they retain their wild and unpredictable nature, no matter how tame they may seem. Putting wild animals and people in close proximity, as they are at roadside zoos, is always dangerous.
5. Laws Regulating Exotic Animal Ownership are Insufficient.
Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Tiger King demonstrates that current U.S. laws and regulations regarding exotic animal ownership are wholly insufficient. Laws and ordinances covering ownership of exotic animals are a dizzying patchwork that vary from town to town, county to county, and state to state. As of October 2016, 19 states prohibit possession of at least large cats, wolves, bears, nonhuman primates, and dangerous reptiles. Thirteen states have a partial ban, prohibiting possession of some exotic animals. Fourteen states require a license or permit to possess exotic animals. The remaining four states do not have a legislative or monitoring scheme, but may regulate some aspect of ownership.
Born Free USA advocates for laws and regulations to keep wild animals out of captivity, such as the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which would strengthen existing law to prohibit the private possession of big cat species and ban public contact with big cats. If you are a U.S. resident, you can take action on his bill by writing to your member of Congress.
As the Internet reacts to Tiger King, spawning countless memes and jokes about its various characters and personalities, let us not lose sight of the truly important message of the film: Joe Exotic and people like him view animals as commodities – as things – to be produced, used, abused, and disposed of at will. Animals deserve better than this and it is up to us to call out this cruelty and work to end it!
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Karen
