Ok so here are the pictures of me with the tigers! The beginning ones are of me with "small" tigers. Then I moved to the "big" tigers and boy are they big!!
After almost getting accidentally pounced on by a tiger fixated on the gardener behind me, I went and laid with another one. Yet a different one came and walked right in between us and my heart was racing. These cats are clearly powerful and awesome! Yet ANOTHER one came up to me while I was posing and nuzzled my shoulder! Again, freaked me out! But wow, what an experience!! Despite the facility denying it, there is still speculation on whether the cats are drugged, but they were pretty alert and playful, which just makes the whole thing even crazier!
Next I went to the big cat area and WHOA these are incredible animals! There were times when the staff hit the tigers on the head with a stick, and while some people consider this cruel, I equated it to popping a dog on the snout. It alarms them more than hurts them. Because let's get real... If a tiger wanted to do some damage, it's gonna do some freakin damage! They seemed annoyed at being hit, but definitely not hurt. The kingdom has about 100 tigers, all born into captivity. I asked if the tigers spent all their time in these display areas (pretty cramped) and was told that each tiger spends about 2 years on display and are then moved to a huge open (but of course still limited) area where they can run free. I'm skeptical about this, but I hope it's true...
I'm torn about these animals, as well as the elephants here, as tourist attractions. Of course I hope they are treated decently, and I know the way to stop them from being used as attractions is to not support it. But being able to be so close to them was truly an amazing experience. Does that make me a horrible person? Cuz I really loved touching them :-\ :-[
Now the big ones
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