I'm sure I've vaguely heard of this place before, but wowwww. I went to their website after coming across a groupon for the place (where it has 4.5 stars out of over 2,000 reviews, proving you should never trust reviewers). You can pay just $50 to play with big cat cubs, which they always seem to have an abundance of. For $5,000 you can buy a cub for yourself. They currently have 250+ big cats (tigers, lions, and their mixes). There's some real gems on the awful website:
From the rescues and sanctuary lies pages:
- Most sanctuaries don't really rescue animals, they are just re-homes. "Rescues are an animal that is beat, abuses, starved or neglected and has just a matter of days before it dies and needs rescued. Or an animal that finds itself in a situation that is detrimental to the life of the animal like being stuck in a pond, hit by a car or trapped somewhere."
- "Sanctuaries are NOTHING but a private owner with a non-profit tax status that likes the kind of animal they so call rescue. Most of the Sanctuaries we have seen are hoarders with a God complex that think they are the only ones that should have these animals and not you." (This is different from Joe how?)
- Two paragraphs later... "If you do your homework and really study this place they don’t like these animals personally because they don’t allow any affection or love given to these animals. In fact if you do your homework you will see that they are for the extinction of Tigers." (So they rescue that animal species because they like it, but then they don't like it?)
- "Look at the AZA zoos, out of all of their tigers in all of the AZA zoos all of them are related except .031% which means they are all inbred and the private sector is the only way to introduce new blood to the gene pool."
Here's the entirety of the hybrids page, because just this whole thing, bolding and comments in parentheses mine:
"The world of online marketing and social media is one of the most popular places for people to be mis-informed about anything.
People can put things online who know nothing about anything but they become keyboard experts in many fields. Especially when it comes to white tigers and hybreeding big cats. Millions of dollars are raised online convincing you that white tigers are inbred to be white and hybreeding of big cats shortens their life and creates deformities.
Here is the truth: Joe Exotic works with some of the world’s top scientist to learn the truth about the genetics of where big cats came from, how they evolved over millions of years and how the species will survive if at all with our climate change. Joe Exotic is the only person on this planet who has successfully hybred 4 species of big cats. (that's not how species work...)
Let’s start with white tigers: White tigers come from a genetic mutation called a
hetrosigus tiger which is an orange Bengal tiger that carries the white gene to produce the white coat. There is no such thing as a white Siberian Tiger. This gene is only found in Bengal Tigers. Two
hetrosigus tigers mate and produce orange or white cubs
depending on which one has the strongest gene or maybe even both the male or female. So what this means is
NO HUMAN can predict the color out come just by breeding white tigers together. You can breed two white tigers together and NEVER get a white baby
so their (the people scamming you for money telling you lies) about white tigers that must be inbred to have white babies is wrong. They are posting this stuff online just to get your money to stop something that is not happening.
DNA from 19 zoos and Sanctuaries donated to these same
gentistist and guess what.
Not one Tiger was related. Here is the research paper they published which we would like to warn you the biggest scammer out there is Big Cat Rescue of Tampa Florida and none of her white tigers were related to anyone elses. So why keep lying abou them? MONEY....
Link: Oaktrust Library (There's no actual link. Maybe because the paper, written by an undergrad and not a "gentistist", doesn't say that, just that they aren't
significantly inbred? It also only used 6 white tigers - 6 orange tigers, 5 white tigers, 2 golden tabby tigers, 1 snow white tiger and 2 leopards, one of which they weren't even able to sequence because the sample was so poor.
http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bi...CARNEY-THESIS-2013.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y )
Now let’s talk about hybrids:
Hybreeding is something that happens in the wild. This is how new species are found and discovered. Do you think Noah had all of these on one Ark?
Hybreeding of big cats has proven many things for us to learn from.
- They are all the same and derived from one cat millions of years ago or they could not breed and produce off spring making a hybrid cat
- It proves and has proven that hybrid cats are genetically stronger, healthier than purebred big cats. Just like a mutt dog gets sick and withstands illnesses and sicknesses much better than a purebred dog does (that's 100% false about dogs)
- Hybrid cats will be the only ones to survive climate change in todays world. As our climate changes and loss of habitat due to destruction hybrid cats are the only ones that will be able to adapt to these changes."
Zoo owner "Joe Exotic" has to contend with a tragedy as his husband accidentally shot himself and has died:
Husband Of Animal Park Operator Joe Exotic Dies In Shooting
It seems that the husband, who was "really good with guns", held one to his head and pulled the trigger. "He knew there was a bullet in the chamber, but Travis Maldonado said it would not fire without the magazine." Bunch of geniuses at this place. I found an article where Joe is quoted as saying "One careless mistake snuffed him out from the rest of us," because that's a great way to phrase it, right? Worth noting that Travis was 31 years younger than Joe.
Edit: Meant to include this link. He apparently tosses out his own brand of condoms during his daily talks.
Zoo owner accused of tossing condoms to crowd with children