WHY ANIMALS DO THE THING

reggiemess:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

hands-of-blue:

hayjulay:

poorlittlequeenie:

thebearqueen:

nothing-here-go-away:

wolfstrider:

thomassawyerismyname:

mangiemay:

irvinator1:

booksarerevolution:

vegankween:

1. Those tigers look thin.

2. Zoos are fucking stupid.

3. Capturing wild animals and using them for human entertainment is a super shitty thing to do.

4. This is not cool.

This is abuse and horrible.  Zoos are prisons.

Some zoos only take old animals to where they are given an easy life. Their maintenance is funded by people coming into the zoo.

Those tigers are not thin.

“Zoos are fucking stupid” wow such science you sold me

They weren’t captured for this purpose, they probably weren’t captured at all, it’s called rescuing. 

This is cool.

This is not abuse, it’s actually exercise if you think about it.

Zoos are not prisons. Zoos allow us to rescue animals, research them, and protect them from hunters and the dangers that we, as humans, impose on them.

I’m so done with all the shit about zoos on my fucking dash. 

Zoos literally save animals every day so why don’t you do your freaking research.

This comment is perfect^

Animals come to zoos as a result of 

• being born captive
• getting injured in the wild and rescued to live a healthy life in captivity
• being rescued from black market dealers, private collectors, or the like who decide that they can no longer care for the animals or who had been illegally keeping the animals
• being in a breeding program to increase their numbers because the animal is endangered in the wild

If you knew anything about tigers at all, you’d know that they are endangered in the wild due to poaching and hunting. It is of utmost importance that their numbers increase, or they will go extinct within the next fifty years. I don’t know what zoo this is so I don’t know their reputation, but the tigers look healthy, and this tug-of-war is good for them because some animals get stressed in zoos when they are bored. This isn’t solely to entertain zoo guests, it is to give the tigers something fun to do.

Zoos do not snatch animals from the wild without a good reason. If you want to protest animal captivity, go to SeaWorld and protest the orcas being kept there, they are far too large to belong in such cramped spaces and they are solely kept for entertainment.

Thank you and good day.

ALSO ITS NOT LIKE THEY’RE FORCING THE TIGERS TO GRAB THE ROPE, THE TIGER WANTS TO PLAY

Tigers play just like domestic cats play with each other, this is for the educational benefit of the visitors and the enrichment benefit of the tigers. Also word to the comment above. Tigers are endangered to the point that they cannot repopulate themselves in the wild, they need the help of captive institutions like zoos, where they live carefree lives free of stress and can breed and birth without fear that other predators and mating competitors will come along and eat their cubs.

Furthermore, these tigers are NOT thin. In fact, one of the ones in the large group looks borderline obese. People who know nothing about animals need to stop talking about animals.

Boosting the shit out of this because I’m so damn tired of whiney morons (who probably never get outside) bitching about animal’s rights when they really have no fucking clue.

DO YOUR GODDAMN HOMEWORK.

ALL OF EVERYTHING IN THIS COMMENTARY

@why-animals-do-the-thing I know you went to that zoos conference, is this good enrichment and all ok for the tigers? I’m inclined to agree with the later commentary that it is, but…?

I don’t know what facility this is so I don’t know the details, but from what I can tell this is a pretty good setup and it’s good enrichment for the tigers. 

Notice the rope is fed through heavy metal piping with multiple bends, so there’s no way a tiger can tug and somebody’s hand could end up near it’s mouth. There’s a secondary barrier at the base of the fences to keep guests from getting too close, or they’re held back with a rope - it’s good for this set-up, but only if the area they’re in isn’t public access during the rest of the day, because otherwise it’s not a good guest-stupidity-preventer. 

This is almost absolutely a trained behavior, because cats don’t have a tug reflex like dogs do. It’s a pretty cool one to get them to engage it - it’s a great way to give people a ‘personal experience’ (which is important to get them to care about conservation) that doesn’t involve actually letting them touch a tiger. It shows how strong the cats are, too, and hopefully instills a little bit of respect in the guests participating and watching. 

Also, these tigers are good weights (the white is maybe a bit overweight although it’s hard to tell at the angle). Tigers are incredibly slender cats when at a good body condition - when I first was able to be around them, I was amazed that they’re very long but really narrow animals. Cats as a taxa really aren’t meant to carry around body fat at all. 

I’ve actually looked into the sources of these images before!  The first and last are from Busch Gardens.  While the specific activity of a tug-of-war game between tigers and guests, on its own, isn’t bad, the image of multiple tigers is from is from a circus-type zoo in China (here’s an article that uses the image and names the specific zoo) that does dancing bear shows and breeds white tigers.

Just as you often can’t tell that a zoo is necessarily bad from an out-of-context image, you also can’t tell if a zoo is good!

Thanks for the source! I should have talked about the multiple cat image, actually, when I first reblogged this - I must have missed seeing it when I scrolled because I’ve seen the post before. It’s not appropriate or okay to house multiple solitary large cats in an enclosure like that, so it makes sense that’s from a different facility.