The Trouble with America’s Captive Tigers | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

Nothing would have prepared me for what we actually saw even before we go in. So we, you know, start driving towards South Myrtle Beach, and, uh, we're driving through this suburban neighborhood where there's families and, you know, your typical suburban American neighborhood. The whole time I'm thinking, do these people know that there are dozens of tigers living right next to them?

This is journalist Mariana van Zeller. In 2019, she was producing a story about tiger tourism for a National Geographic Channel show called "Trafficked." Her reporting led her to Myrtle Beach Safari, a wildlife attraction also known as Tigers. It's run by one of the biggest captive tiger breeders in America, Doc Antle. He currently owns, he's has owned actually since 1983, this sort of 50-acre property in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, called Tigers.

"Good morning. Good, good morning. Welcome to Tigers. This is the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species. Hey, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to our home." You heard that right. This is where we live with over 100 amazing animal ambassadors. It's basically a park, a safari park essentially, where people can go and visit all these wild animals. He has an array of, you know, dozens of tigers and chimpanzees and a very famous now elephant called Bubbles that he likes to ride around the park.

But what most people are here for is the experience of getting to pet a tiger cub. You've got couples there on their honeymoon, you know, anniversaries, families with grandkids. Most of the people just, you know, love tigers and have never been this close to tigers, and this is their opportunity to be close to a wild animal. Conservationists and animal welfare advocates have a different take on what's happening at the facility. Critics of Doc Antle and his park will say that they are bred for profits. They are bred to make money because they attract visitors to places like this, to parks like this.

Those critics say that commercial tiger breeding is the reason why captive tigers in the United States actually outnumber tigers in the wild. I'm Peter Guinn, editor-at-large at National Geographic magazine, and this is "Overheard at National Geographic," a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at NatGeo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.

This week, why are there so many tigers in the U.S., and what's being done to protect these big cats and the people who live near them? More after the break. A century ago, there were a hundred thousand tigers roaming in forests, swamps, and savannas throughout Asia. Today, the World Wildlife Fund estimates there are only about 3,900 left in the wild, and that's largely because people have moved into many of the areas where tigers live, reducing their habitat. Poachers have also targeted them for the international wildlife trade.

And yet, conservationists believe there are many more tigers in a place that's quite far from their natural home—in the United States. There are anywhere between five to ten thousand captive tigers—which is a crazy number, and I could not believe it when I first started looking into this. Mariana wanted to know why there were so many, so she started talking to animal welfare experts, and they pointed her to tiger breeders.

There was one name that we kept hearing again and again, and that was Doc Antle. You might recognize Doc Antle as one of the characters on the Netflix series "Tiger King." He also handled animals for films like "Ace Ventura" and "Dr. Dolittle." And, full disclosure, National Geographic worked with Doc Antle on some TV programs years ago. He claims that by breeding tigers, he's helping to save them, but conservationists and animal welfare advocates say park operators like Doc Antle are really breeding tigers so they can have a steady supply of cubs for customers to pet.

This is harder on the animals than you might think. Breeders often separate mothers from their cubs soon after they're born so that mothers will go back into heat sooner, and dozens of visitors every day handle the cubs for hours. Scientists say that causes physical distress, weakens the immune system, and makes the animals much more likely to develop infections.

Mariana had a front row seat to the cub-petting experience at Myrtle Beach Safari. "So you got to hold a baby tiger. What's that experience like, and how is it controlled, you know, in the documental world?" So we're sitting around this sort of big circular area, and they start bringing the tiger cubs around. Um, they brought about four or five tiger cubs.

"Now we're gonna release a bunch of babies in here; is that okay with everyone?" I thought so. "Now, when these babies are in here, they're gonna be crawling across your laps. When they're in your laps, make sure you reach out and you pet them. That's what we're here for, right?" And then there was one tiger that actually came around that also came and sat on my lap. Um, they told us that he was four or five months old. "Please do not stick your fingers in their mouths. These are predators, baby predators, but they have teeth."

I was supposed to be happy and exhilarated with this experience, but deep inside, it was troubling for me as a human being holding a tiger. You know, was it exciting? I mean, was it sort of the thrilling thing? Can you see what people are spending $500 and more for this experience? I mean, did it live up to this idea?

"You know, Peter, I wish I could say yes, but the truth is that not for me. Um, because the whole time I'm thinking about what I've heard from all the experts—about the way how you see the tiger cubs being handed over from lap to lap and hand to hand—and the whole time when it landed on my lap, the whole time I'm thinking, you know, that I am just one more lap and one more hand, and this is not something that I really want the tiger to experience. And that I, at that time, had no, um, didn't really want to experience for myself."

For many, it's a trip of a lifetime, and they received lots of information during tours about how the facility is saving endangered species. "If you have been a Barefoot Landing and had your photo taken with one of those little animals, we take money from that and from the tour you are doing right now and put it into wildlife conservation projects all over the world."

So he's really trying to sell this idea that any money that is spent at this park, um, that is ultimately part of that money at least will end up in conservation and trying to rescue wild tigers. Mariana says it's easy for any visitor to believe that's what he's doing. The tigers seemingly look very, like they're very well taken care of. It's a beautiful facility; everything is so clean. So it's sometimes harder, you know, to find what are the holes in this.

When Mariana visited Myrtle Beach Safari, tickets cost $500 per person, and visitors paid thousands for other special experiences with animals, like getting to swim with a tiger. Doc Antle told Mariana that the money he makes at Myrtle Beach Safari gets placed into his nonprofit, the Rare Species Fund, and that group distributes the money to conservation efforts around the world. "We solely have built ranger stations deep in the jungles. We pay the rangers' salaries every day to walk the jungles to pick up deadly snares, to chase down poachers, to support scientists who are doing research. So the money that people spend here is visibly active in the wild, saving wildlife on a daily basis, and has been doing so for 35 years."

But she couldn't get a detailed answer for how much money is spent on saving wild tigers or where and how it's spent. Doc Antle needs to have lots of tiger cubs to keep his customers happy. But Mariana wondered, what happens to all those tigers once they become full-grown adults? At about three months, the cubs grow big enough to be dangerous to people. They're also expensive to take care of and feed. It costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to feed just one tiger.

Tigers born in roadside zoos can't be released into the wild, and even if they could, these owners often crossbreed tigers with lions and mix tigers from different subspecies—so like a Bengal with a Siberian, which would never happen in the wild. Biologists say that because of those mixed genetics, those tigers can't be used to restore wild populations. So one of the biggest questions out there is what happens to these tigers once they reach—uh—once they become adults and they just become too expensive to handle.

It is something that we tried; we asked Dr. Antle, we asked every single expert, and there is no actual answer out there. Mariana looked into claims by animal welfare advocates that the tigers end up getting sold or sometimes killed. Two incidents in particular stood out. In 2017, a teenager tried to transport a Bengal tiger cub across the U.S.-Mexico border, and in 2018, a New York resident tried to ship tiger and lion bones to Thailand. But beyond that, her reporting has shown that it's difficult to find out what happens to them. They just seem to disappear.

More after this. When tiger owners realize they can't keep their animals anymore, there are some safe and reputable places that can give them a home. Our senior editor, Eli Chen, went to one just an hour south of St. Louis, Missouri, called the Crown Ridge Tiger Sanctuary. It has three tigers: one male named Izzy and two females, Gracie and Thor. They hang out in grassy, wooded spaces surrounded by a 16-foot steel fence that's also surrounded by an eight-foot steel fence. It kind of looks like a fortress.

Gracie walks up to the fence near where the operations manager, John Madigan, is standing, and John points out Gracie's eyes, which are almost completely white. "Like, if you look close to her, you can see her pupils behind her eye." So those aren't the pupils, and it's just like some discoloration that happens. "Like on this side, you can see she has red discoloration as well." Gracie and her sister Thor were rescued in 2006 from an animal park in southern Missouri.

John says before Gracie was rescued, she had a condition called entropion. It's a condition that, like dogs and cats, can get, and it's where their eyelids are kind of folded over. So when she was younger, every time she would blink her eye, her eyelashes would kind of scratch the front of her eye. Because the facility that she was at wasn't taking proper care of her, over time, scar tissue built up. Gracie is at least 90 percent blind. Out of all the cats, she tends to react to our voice more. "So, like, if she's inside, we'll kind of talk to her a little bit more so she kind of knows where we are, knows where the food is."

John has worked at the sanctuary for four years and before that volunteered for five years. In that time, he's developed a strong bond with the cats. "You know, when I get here in the morning, you know, Thor will walk over and kind of chuff and say hello to me, and like that's the best sound because it's, you know, you kind of get to—they're opening up to you a little bit, and you know acknowledging that they appreciate you or, you know, they recognize you, kind of thing."

Contrary to what I thought, tigers don't actually purr. John says they chuff. "So what does a chuff sound like? Can you imitate a chuff?" "Um, I can try. It's kind of like blowing out air, and they—all of them sound different. Um, I would say, when I chuff at them, it's usually like a, 'Oh, you chuffed back? You talked to a little noise.'"

Yeah, and they do more than chuff. They'll have little, like, moans and groans, especially when they're like hungry or eating or want attention or something like that. So those are also fun to hear, and then, you know, like their roar and stuff—that shows a little bit more of their, like, you know, power, same with their growl. "You know, that is a good reminder—not that we typically need one—but a good reminder on why we don't go in with them."

"Do you think if you got in the enclosure, they would attack you? Or, I mean, what do you—your sense of that—do you ever feel like you've made a connection, you could actually— you know, interact with them?" "I—I don't know if they would aggressively attack. I don't know. I—I'm not going to find out, but even if they weren't, um, being aggressive, like Izzy, one of the things he likes to do when we go in the alleyway to, like, change his water, he kind of likes to run up and down the alleyway with us and kind of like stalk us and run around. So like, if we were in the enclosure, even if he was being playful and, you know, jumping on us, again, he's a 500-pound tiger with razor-sharp claws and teeth, so even if he wasn't necessarily meaning to hurt, he could easily kill me."

John's hard rule about never, ever interacting physically with tigers is one of the biggest differences between rescue sanctuaries and roadside zoos. In 2019, Crown Ridge received certification from the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. That means the facility follows strict rules like not allowing human contact with the animals and ensuring that the tigers are treated ethically and humanely. Crown Ridge doesn't breed them either because that's not part of their mission.

As for rescuing more tigers, John says that can be difficult for many reasons. "Do you guys ever get any, like, tips? I mean, is there anybody that calls you and says, 'Hey, I know some—there's a tiger in such-and-such a place, and I think it's, you know, mistreated. Can you guys go and get it?' Do you ever get anything like that?" "So we do. Um, we get, you know, our, like, supporters and stuff reaching out. Unfortunately, there's not typically much we can do. You know, we don't have any legal authority to seize cats from anybody if they don't want to really, you know, surrender their cats."

Sanctuaries can rescue big cats when an organization like PETA sues a roadside zoo for harassing animals or when the U.S. Department of Agriculture closes them down for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act. Sometimes a big cat owner simply doesn't have the ability to take care of one. It is altogether too easy to acquire big cats as a private individual in the United States.

Kate Dylewski is a senior policy advisor at the Animal Welfare Institute, an organization that lobbies for stronger legal protections for animals. Kate says the laws around big cat ownership in the U.S. are incredibly loose. There is no federal framework for regulating pet ownership of these big cats, and so it comes down to state and local laws. There are 19 states that prohibit private ownership entirely, but then the rest of the states it's a mishmash of you can own some species but not others, or you need a permit in order to own them, or there's no law whatsoever. But in five states—Nevada, Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin—you don't need a permit to own one.

To me, tigers are massive, powerful apex predators, and I've got a hard time imagining one hanging out in my kitchen like a house cat. So how are people adopting them? I wanted to know how easy it would be for me to acquire one, so I went online, searched for exotic animal breeders, and called them up. "Hey there, this is Peter Guinn. I'm calling from—my name's Peter Gwynn—and, uh, I'm an editor at National Geographic. I was looking for, uh, exotic bob. I got this number off of—I saw you guys actually had an advertisement for tiger cubs, and we're working on a story about tiger ownership and just wanted to hear more about, you know, what that involved."

I didn't have much luck. "You know, what it's like to breed and sell a tiger. I would love to talk to you about it if you get a chance to give me a call. My number's… Anyway, thanks. Take care."

I called people in Alaska, Montana, and Pennsylvania. I spoke for a while to a man who said he'd ship a cub to my house in Washington, D.C., if I wired him a thousand dollars in Bitcoin up front. So, okay, probably a scam. But I also spoke to a woman who advertised a mountain lion cub, and she told me she'd sold it within just a few hours, but she didn't want to talk on the record. After the release of "Tiger King," she said big cat breeders and owners don't want to draw public attention to themselves.

But I did manage to speak with one big cat owner, former Dallas Police Chief Bill Rathburn, who at one time owned seven tigers. He hasn't owned tigers in several years, but he thinks fondly of them. "I would go in the cage with them and hug them, and two of them sucked my finger their whole lives." Bill explained that the tigers sucking his fingers was a sign of affection. "They all suck your finger as babies, but then most of them stop. The two of them, including the oldest one, the first one we got, sucked my finger till the day you—I mean, that just seems so bizarre. I mean, you—this is like a, you know, such a wild creature and such a powerful creature. That just sounds so, so, you know, risky, I guess, too, to somebody who's never been in a cage with a tiger before."

"Well, that was not reckless, you know? But, you know, I knew his personality, and I knew his moods, and so I made all those assessments before I went in. And you learn a lot of things in owning them. One thing you learn is never turn your back on them." Not that they'll attack you viciously; they'll attack you playfully. But as much as Bill loved his tigers, he believes that many people shouldn't have them.

"I don't really—I’ve never advocated for private ownership of tigers, uh, because most people either are not able to or are not willing to make the financial commitment that's required to own them safely." Kate Dylewski says owning a big cat comes with major risks to the animal and the people around it. In the last three decades, there have been close to 400 incidents in which a big cat escaped, mauled adults and children, or posed other threats to public safety.

"You know, are there any specific instances or case studies that you know about that you can sort of like say, like, this is example A of why it's not a good idea to have tigers in people's backyards or roadside zoos, etc.—the incident that most quickly jumps to mind as a glaring example of why this is a threat to public safety is what happened in Zanesville, Ohio, back in 2011. There was a man named Terry Thompson who, unbeknownst to his neighbors and unbeknownst to the local sheriff's department, had a menagerie of over 50 exotic animals, including over 30 big cats. One day, he threw open the gates to his property and killed himself, and suddenly the local law enforcement department was getting calls from people saying, 'There's a lion running down the highway. What do we do?' And the sheriff's department was forced to come out and kill nearly every single one of those animals."

I remember that. I remember that being on the news. It was crazy. Terry Thompson's story is pretty extreme, but there are many less extreme cases that are still really scary. There have been several incidents where a big cat escaped from its owner's house, showed up in someone's yard, and killed their dog, or in some cases authorities just found some tigers wandering on the side of the road, not sure where they came from. It often falls to local law enforcement, who aren't trained to handle big cats, to address the situation.

A broad coalition of scientists, accredited zoos, and animal welfare advocates have been pushing for stronger regulations to protect big cats. Kate's organization, the Animal Welfare Institute, is among those that have lobbied Congress to pass the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which would ban private ownership of tigers and lions. "You know, we're talking about someone like you or like me who says, 'I'd really like to have a big cat on my private property,' and goes out and buys one. That would no longer be allowed under this law."

The Big Cat Public Safety Act has gotten strong bipartisan support in Congress. It's also backed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and many law enforcement agencies. But some big cat owners would be exempt—people who already own big cats, for example, as well as accredited zoos, rescue sanctuaries, and people with federal licenses to exhibit animals. But the law would prohibit exhibitors from allowing visitors to touch big cats. No zoo would be allowed to offer up cubs for the public to handle anymore, um, and this would not put any zoos out of business. This would not impact any zoo that wants to operate in the traditional manner of having big cats behind bars for the public to come and see.

The bill has gotten increased attention after the release of "Tiger King," which went a long way to raising public awareness of the tiger tourism industry. Meanwhile, several characters from "Tiger King" have gotten into trouble with the existing laws. In October 2020, the state of Virginia charged Doc Antle with 15 counts, including animal cruelty and wildlife trafficking.

There are still a few places in the world where wild tigers prowl freely. As part of her reporting for "Trafficked," Mariana traveled to a forest in Thailand to join a team of rangers there patrolling the area for poachers. They asked her not to disclose the name of the forest to protect the wild tigers living there, and it was a wild experience. "I mean, we're walking deep into this forest, and it's beautiful and lush, and there are all sorts of animals." She and her crew ended up camping in the forest with the rangers and slept outside, and it was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

"We were set up in hammocks with all these park rangers, and I started hearing all these noises. You know, there are snakes. I'm thinking they're snakes coming into my hammock, and then I started thinking of the worst, which is obviously there had to be a tiger right next to me, and I sort of imagined that it was breathing right next to me." The following morning, she told the rangers about her fears, but they laughed because a wild tiger sighting, even here in the heart of tiger country, is extremely rare. Some of the rangers who'd worked in the forest for years had never even seen one themselves.

It sort of gave me that respect that I believe we should have for tigers, which is if I was lucky enough to see a tiger, it should be seen in the wild, and it should—we should—we should see it far away, and we should respect it as the wild and beautiful predator that it is. Well said indeed.

More after this. Hey, I'm Eli Chen, senior editor of Overheard at National Geographic, with more programming notes for Mariana van Zeller's reporting on the tiger trade and other black markets around the world. Tune into National Geographic Channel series "Trafficked." If you're interested in learning more about captive tigers in the U.S., make sure you also check out National Geographic's coverage of this issue in our show notes. We'll link to articles that writer Natasha Daly has reported on big cats and wildlife tourism, and subscribers can read a magazine article called "Captive Tigers in the U.S. Outnumber Those in the Wild." It's a problem. It comes with a fascinating map that tracks how tigers get traded across the country.

That's in the show notes right there in your podcast app.

"Overheard at National Geographic" is produced by Brian Gutierrez, Jacob Pinter, and Laura Sim. Our senior editor is Eli Chen, who also produced this episode. Executive producer of audio is Davar Ardellon, who also edited this episode. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris, with special thanks to Velma Linares, Natasha Daly, and Rachel Bale. Hansdales Sioux composed our theme music and engineers our episodes. This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. Whitney Johnson is the director of visuals and immersive experiences. Susan Goldberg is National Geographic editorial director, and I'm your host, Peter Guinn. Thanks for listening, and see you next time!