TigNewton

The thing about most animals in captivity is that they were born there, their parents were born there, and their parents parents were born there. Tigers specifically do great in good captive situations. They have good nutrition, veterinary care, daily behavioral enrichment and exercise.

In the wild they deal with poaching, disease, habitat loss. Their territory is often so segmented they can't find mates. They're so close to human settlements where one mistake can mean they're killed as a public nuisance. There are only 3000-4000 tigers left in the wild for all of those reasons, and there isn't much positive to say about the struggles they face out there.

The tigers I worked with were pampered and well taken care of. They had large exhibits, lots of goodies to eat, got to play every day, and just hang out with their family.

From a moral absolutist standpoint you can make the argument that it's worse in captivity because they're stuck there, but they don't know any different, and if we think about removing them all from captivity we may get to a point where they all die in the wild, and we lose the species or good.

I won't convince anyone who takes a morally absolute stance against animal captivity, but I won't break a sweat as I argue that the animals I worked with had a damned good situation (I'd put up against any tiger's short, brutal life in the wild).

You know, I worked with white tigers and golden tabby tigers which I was not excited about. I absolutely loved the cats, but I don't like the idea of breeding that way (for color). Breed them for genetic diversity, keep them natural (and you can argue that whites and other colorations have been found in the wild in the past so it's cool, but...) it just makes it hard to really drive home messages about conservation and staying informative on tigers.

Ligers and Tigons are even further in that direction. I mean yeah we breed donkeys and horses to make mules and there's a reason for that, but there's no reason for ligers beyond "look how big and weird it is!"

So I'm, not a fan. I'm not a big fan of labradoodles either.

Behaviorally it's extraordinary how similar they are. They're more intense and hungry, but the way they communicate with their body language, the way they rub on your leg (or chest) when they want attention, the way they roll on their back when they want a belly rub, the way they try to grab you when they're feeling frisky, the way their ears go back when they're being sneaky, or whip their tail back and forth when they want to run at you...just like a housecat.

Before I went to school I may have had a bit of a skeptical view of animal training because I'd read a lot and watched a lot of docs that made it out to be "bad." Then I went to this place that was focused mainly on positive reinforcement.

BF Skinner thought only positive reinforcement training worked. His grad students discovered that punishment does indeed work, but mostly only in the presence of the threat of it (reinforcement sticks better). Punishment can also cause unpredictable and often aggressive responses.

So when I got this tiger training job I was thrilled that they had the same position. Historically when it comes to tiger training (like in circuses), positive reinforcement was nowhere to be found. But we did all our training using positive reinforcement. Punishment was only used when it came to things that "had to" happen or not happen. Like they weren't allowed to bite us, scratch us, jump on us, fight their siblings, or sometimes go one direction down a corridor. The main punishment we used was a vinegar/water spray. We'd spray a fine mist and they hated the smell. That would usually get them to avoid it and do what we asked.

As for enrichment: We played with them with toys, we gave them different treats including bones, we'd make ice treats, we'd stack toys on pylons for them to knock off, we'd do training sessions, we'd spray cardbord with perfume for them to roll on and destroy, we'd put out hay for them, anything we could think of. One time we grabbed a picnic table from the guest area of the park and put it in with them. That wasn't so allowed, but the cats loved it and took a while of laying on it to destroy it.

Goddamned Tiger King.