Public safety measures are hardly enforced at all where the purchase of large, exotic animals is concerned. A woman in Washington owned a black panther, a lion, a tiger, a cougar, and a huge wild wolf that eyed her guests as prey. In 2006, Cindy Gamble of Minnesota was killed by the pet 500-pound Bengal tiger she had raised from a cub. In 2003, a 10 year old boy named Clayton Eller was dragged into the cage of his aunt and uncle’s formerly docile 400-pound tiger and mauled to death. And in 2011 a man named Terry Thompson, moments before fatally shooting himself, decided to free his personal menagerie of two wolves, a macaque monkey, a baboon, six black bears, three mountain lions, two grizzly bears, three cougars, 17 lions, and 18 massive Bengal tigers – all of whom were shot and killed by authorities ill-equipped to deal with the virtual zoo unleashed on Zanesville, Ohio.
So how do people keep acquiring these animals? If you live in Nevada, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, or South Carolina, you can just purchase one without any kind of license or permit. And there are a number of other states where you can buy an exotic animal like a lion or baboon just with a bit of paperwork and a small permit fee. And what about other states where owning such animals is illegal? Well, the US Department of Agriculture will actually issue licenses to those requiring the animals for use in circuses, zoos, educational displays, petting farms or zoos, animal acts, wildlife parks, marine mammal parks, and even sanctuaries. When the USDA does inspect a property, an exotic animal owner can easily disguise the fact they have more animals than they’re revealing.
The considerable burden on keeping these wild animals is sometimes lost on potential owners; tigers, for instance, may start out as small and fairly manageable cubs but will eventually grow into 500 to 800 pound adults, as much as 12 feet long. The adult tiger will eat about 15 pounds of meat per day, and the females typically roam an area of about seven square miles whereas the males are likely to prowl an area of around 40 square miles. As a result, many owners of large wild animals resort to desperate calls to zoos or sanctuaries to take the animals off their hands – or in some very sad cases liable to raise the hackles of animal activists, simply resort to putting the animals down.
One might think the Captive Wild Animal Safety Act of 2003 would make it difficult to own exotic animals – particularly large, carnivorous ones – in the United States. Or that only wealthy people find loopholes in this act and go ahead and purchase the animals and keep them at home anyway. This reasoning fails to take into account that the Safety Act largely deals with restrictions on transporting such animals across state lines. It doesn’t even require a federal registry for the animals being sold.
Public safety measures are hardly enforced at all where the purchase of large, exotic animals is concerned. A woman in Washington owned a black panther, a lion, a tiger, a cougar, and a huge wild wolf that eyed her guests as prey. In 2006, Cindy Gamble of Minnesota was killed by the pet 500-pound Bengal tiger she had raised from a cub. In 2003, a 10 year old boy named Clayton Eller was dragged into the cage of his aunt and uncle’s formerly docile 400-pound tiger and mauled to death. And in 2011 a man named Terry Thompson, moments before fatally shooting himself, decided to free his personal menagerie of two wolves, a macaque monkey, a baboon, six black bears, three mountain lions, two grizzly bears, three cougars, 17 lions, and 18 massive Bengal tigers – all of whom were shot and killed by authorities ill-equipped to deal with the virtual zoo unleashed on Zanesville, Ohio.
So how do people keep acquiring these animals? If you live in Nevada, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, or South Carolina, you can just purchase one without any kind of license or permit. And there are a number of other states where you can buy an exotic animal like a lion or baboon just with a bit of paperwork and a small permit fee. And what about other states where owning such animals is illegal? Well, the US Department of Agriculture will actually issue licenses to those requiring the animals for use in circuses, zoos, educational displays, petting farms or zoos, animal acts, wildlife parks, marine mammal parks, and even sanctuaries. When the USDA does inspect a property, an exotic animal owner can easily disguise the fact they have more animals than they’re revealing.
The considerable burden on keeping these wild animals is sometimes lost on potential owners; tigers, for instance, may start out as small and fairly manageable cubs but will eventually grow into 500 to 800 pound adults, as much as 12 feet long. The adult tiger will eat about 15 pounds of meat per day, and the females typically roam an area of about seven square miles whereas the males are likely to prowl an area of around 40 square miles. As a result, many owners of large wild animals resort to desperate calls to zoos or sanctuaries to take the animals off their hands – or in some very sad cases liable to raise the hackles of animal activists, simply resort to putting the animals down.