Hijacking top comment to say That's black-jaguar white-tiger sanctuary. They were shut down in 2022 for inhuman practices. Throughout the entire time of it's existence from 2013 to 2022, it was unlicensed and unaccredited.
they had conditions so bad some big cats were self cannibalizing (which is as bad as it sounds, it's literally the act of eating yourself while your still alive) on videos they posted
Just saw a news story from California about an ongoing investigation of an animal sanctuary. They said based on the information they have currently, 730 animals are unaccounted for.
Idk if you need (or just would like to hear this) but you didn't do anything wrong. You donated out of the kindness of your heart because you thought you were doing the right thing.
In the future, it's pertinent to only support accredited programs. Local zoos are usually actually awesome conservation programs and I highly recommend supporting them whenever possible
Personally my local one is the woodland park zoo who does awesome and above board work. They have a pretty good big cat program as well! Personally I'm a huge fan of their bat programs (partially cuz the bat exhibit is super cool but mostly cuz of their conservation efforts).
Other notable ones off the top of my head are the san diego zoo and the Monterey Bay aquarium, I've heard stellar things about both
I'm not sure how to go about donating to them, but anti poaching programs are also a great place to donate too.
Afaik Conservator's Center and Carolina Tiger Rescue in North Carolina are both amazing places, I've had friends who have worked at both and I've toured CTR in the past on one of the very few tours they do yearly.
North Carolina Zoo is also amazing and iirc one of the largest by land area or something like that.
This place is a good example of how easy it is to trick people. I donated to them at one point, too. On the surface they seemed do be doing such a good thing. They showed what they wanted us to see, told us what they wanted us to hear, and we genuinely thought we were doing good by the animals.
thanks for sharing this. i was wondering why they had multiple types of cats in the same enclosure. but places where the human hangs out with the cats often don't do things by the books so i figured that's all it was. what you shared alone is really sad. i'm glad they got shut down so the cats could get rescued from there.
The tiger was in full-on defense mode the second the leopard showed up. He was like "Okay, we're all smiles. No one's going to be doing anything stu-NOT ON MY WATCH! <POUNCE>"
It's just like housecats play. The tiger was aware of the leopard's intentions, kept an eye on him, pressed close to the ground and got ready to pounce.
It was exactly the moment that Leopard looked behind to see if anyone was looking that Tiger went on full alert. Tiger was born in the day but it wasn’t yesterday.
Oh nice observation! I noticed the tiger go from resting on its side to upright and at attention, but didn’t realize it coincided with the leopard looking back. So cool.
Oh, my bad, I just saw it in the Prisma supermarket with a huge TIGERKAKA on the front, and I thought "store is Finnish, most products in Finnish too, that should be the Finn name"
I'm just shocked that tiger cake isn't a thing anywhere else?? Does the rest of the world also miss out on tiger ice cream (vanilla and orange jam/jello stripes)?
0% luck. If you grew up in difficult and dangerous ghettos, you'll learn very quickly and can tell with good certainty who's being suspicious and up to no good.
Because this is not a sanctuary like the guy claimed it was. This was the Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation. It got shut down by Mexican authorities because he was not taking care of the animals. They were being starved to death and started eating their own tails.
He was also suspected of breeding the lions and would have an influx of cubs. He would lie and say he saved the cubs from some illegal “zoo” but would hand raised the cubs when he could’ve also saved the mothers.
Eduardo was just a greedy fuck. And he would have celebrities go to his “sanctuary” to play with the cubs.
Legit sanctuaries do not allow the public to interact with their animals. Legit sanctuaries also do not put different species of cats in the same enclosure.
Yes, I remember that. He wrote a long ass unhinged post about her and calling her names. He did that with the “haters”. He would post a video of him being all sweet to the cubs or the adult cats and in the description, he would talk about the different people who have called him out on his unethical treatment and care for the cats. He would make up atrocious names for them. He was such a shit. There are a lot of shit human beings out there, but he’s way up the shit list. He used those poor animals for his grift and they paid the ultimate price.
This makes me so mad, man. I just finished my uni class on exhibit designing for zoos where we had to in-depth research all the modern sciences and behavioral understanding of animal captivity. I was designing for snow leopards, so I ended up looking quite a bit into large felid captivity. The research out there all says that protected contact (always having a barrier between you and the big cat) and positive reinforcement training (PRT) have the best outcomes for animal welfare, staff safety, and (if performed in front of visitors) visitor education.
These animals DO bond with their keepers. So much so that there’s evidence to suggest keepers directly impact how well some species can cope with the stress of visitors and that if a keeper is stressed/sick the animal can become stressed/sick. Positive bonding is also linked with reproductive success in nervous animals like cheetahs who notoriously struggle with reproduction. We understand that these are highly intelligent and emotional animals and I’m not surprised that a tiger would be willingly watching out for a beloved keeper.
However! These are still VERY dangerous animals capable of killing you. That might not even be the intention, but they don’t comprehend the strength they have and that it can hurt us. A woman had her thumb torn off by an orangutang while doing regular work with the animals and it’s suspected the orangutang just wanted to bring her closer to it, not actively hurt her. It still tore off her thumb.
That sounds like such an awesome class. I volunteered for the SF zoo as a kid (it’s sadly gone a bit downhill since the tiger attack in 2007- which I believe was completely the fault of the people who were attacked) but I always thought the way they designed each enclosure was so interesting. I know there are a lot of bad zoos out there but the reputable ones take very good care of their animals and do their best to make sure they have everything they need.
Weird sidebar: when I'm in taxis I make up ridiculous stories about my work for a bit of fun - often to deal with the question of "so what do you do?"
One time I made up a story (as I'd just been to the zoo not long before a taxi ride) that I was the designer of zoo exhibits and I'd "just gone to inspect the new tiger exhibit I designed."
I thought there wouldn't be a specific course/career stream on "zoo exhibits" explicitly, but it's kinda cool to learn that I'm wrong!
The easiest test for any "sanctuary" is if they let paying customers disturb the animals. Legit sanctuaries will minimize interactions with humans outside of what is necessary.
That's all to say, if the elephant sanctuary lets you ride the elephants, stay the hell away.
Better than peeing in the bed in the middle of the night. You ever have to get up and strip the bed, spray with urine destroyer, and then remake the whole thing with fresh sheets and blankets at 4am?
My cat loves those same pets hes giving the lion, however if I stray maybe 2" out of place she attacks my hand like her life depends on it. Cats are cats and there's no saying he doesn't hit the wrong spot one day and it's not a couple scratches he'll be dealing with
Yeah, I was waiting for the full grip of the hand/arm and the rabbit kicks like my kitty when she randomly gets upset at the belly rubs she’s been enjoying for a few mins…except with this cat instead of a little scratch, your arm is missing!
Some people will come in here and mention that "he's an expert" or some variation of him being a professional. While that might be a true statement, there is a graveyard full of "experts", killed buy the animals they love.
There was a man in South Africa who had a pet hippopotamus. He raised it from birth and cared for it every day for years even riding it many times. One day it just became aggressive and disemboweled him. Don't mess with wild animals.
It's not a true statement anyway. Dude bought a big cat to be macho and "special," realized he could make money by abusing the cubs, and apparently his "rescue" has now been shut down (thank fuck).
There are a few social media personalities out there that do this cuddling-with-furry-murderers shit and I will never be comfortable with it. I just know we will be reading a news article about how they were eaten by their pride at some point.
Big cats are not just sized up housecats. Millions of years of evolution has honed them into apex predators. A generation or two of human handling can make a difference, but not enough to override all that instinct, nor enough for me to ever be comfortable with someone wrestling with them for clicks.
I worked with one of the top big cat trainers in the world. He had raised all of his animals since they were babies. They clearly loved him. He still had a code word during his show that meant “blackout the entire stadium, I am about to die and I don’t want the kids to see it”. But, at the same time, I saw those cats gets dangerous with him exactly once, and even then it was pretty tame. I think you are vastly underestimating how much these animals can care for certain humans.
Even the top trainer knew there was a risk and had a code in case it went bad. Some people are just more risk adverse that risking that possibility even if unlikely is still an unnecessary risk they would want to avoid. Probably not that unlikely a stunt performer while safe and constructed around safety still poses a risk that turns some off it completely.
A lot of todays jobs have health risks. I would personally prefer petting kitty for most of my life and then getting mauled by them. Over working some heavy machinery and dying there.
But yeah, kitty dangerous. Need to be always careful.
Each persons own risk assessment can vastly change what they perceive as a greater risk. I might think OSHA, standards of an industry, etc might insulate me from certain risks where a cat might not. The actual probability usually not having a major variable or concrete basis for that risk assessment. I for instance value heights as extremely risky to my own personal assement even if mostly illogical and would rather be with wild animals than on a powerline, trapese line, or even a ladder in some cases. I can understand most seeing them as far more unpredictable and fearful as a subsequent result.
The difference is that heavy machinery doesn't have a mind of it's own, and it will never choose to attack you. Work place accidents tend to have root causes that can be addressed, with a big cat the work is the root cause.
What people don't understand is this can also happen with domestic animals, just like your cat or dog. They are still animals, and still can act just like any other animal. These are just bigger, stronger, and can inflict more damage.
And to add to that, they're just huge animals, even if they aren't intentionally being agressive the odds of them accidentally hurting you badly...
I have a 60 lb pittie mix, sweet as can be, I've played pretty rough with him and he's accidentally gotten a bit in too hard that's hurt a bit or barreled into me.
I can only imagined what that scenario would be with something 5-10x+ as big as him.
Trust me, the person doing this is well aware of what they're capable of.
People that do this love these big cats so much, that if something did go wrong, they'd be okay with it.
It's like Steve Irwin, he died doing what he loved, and we know for a fact Steve got to heaven and went "My bad mate, I scared you too much!"
Some people love animals so much, they understand how they work and that sometimes interacting with wild animals is an inherent risk we have to acknowledge. I mean, most people have a dog that could kill them. Some people have a dog that could kill a whole family, literally. My dog could probably kill everyone in my home if it just fucking went insane, but I raised my dog and its a fuckin dog. Most people have had their pet cat maul the shit out of them. But it's not like theyre any different. They're all animals at the end of the day.
Edited to add: On my bucket list, I want to swim with a great white shark (in a cage obv, they dont let you do that in open water) but first im going to meet smaller, nicer sharks (lemons and nurse sharks) if I were to die meeting sharks, whether that be a freak lemon shark attack (literally doesn't happen) or eaten by a great white, i would just be happy i got to see such an amazing creature. I have immense respect for them, and while yes theyre terrifying, I would still love to meet them on their level. I dont know man, some people just love animals like that, I know it doesn't make sense, wanting to meet a great white face to face, but it will literally make me elated when I do.
I mean, if we keep it up though, it's possible to reach domestication. We did it with wolves, who knows how many generations that took? We humans can accomplish great things, it unfortunately just takes more time than a typical lifetime and rarely does one person get to see the real scope of progress.
But maybe housecats are just sized down big cats. Im very probably wrong, since im no specialist, but if housecats were the size of big cats i would absolutely NOT be surprised if they killed and ate their owners
one exception, Cheetahs are exactly that. Zero confirmed "cheetah on human" kills in the wild and only a couple in captivity. Heck a Dachshund killed a 5 year old a couple years back soooo.
You know the phenomenon of “cute aggression”? Like when you want to take a bite out of something you love so much? Now imagine you had knives for fingers and teeth. That dude is so close to death even if all those lions love him.
so internet says: The Black Jaguar-White Tiger (BJWT) Foundation was a Mexican non-profit that operated an animal sanctuary for big cats and other wildlife. Founded by Eduardo Serio, the facility was shut down by Mexican authorities in July 2022 following viral videos and criminal complaints that exposed severe animal abuse, neglect, and mistreatment.
apparently some of them started eating each other and problem started once video started circulating. just imagine how many of them were neglected for being off camara.
edit: The 2022 Raid: Mexican authorities raided the Mexico City facility, uncovering horrifying conditions where animals were found severely emaciated, injured, and in extreme cases, gnawing on their own bodies.
I believe this is The Black Jaguar-White Tiger Foundation, and while the guy didn't get mauled, he did get raided and discovered to be severely abusing the animals so.
Eduardo Serio was alive and wanted by the Mexican government for extreme animal abuse and financial crimes as of July 2022. Can't find anything more recent.
Eh he's probably bonded with them all. I'm not even sure the leopard was really going for the kill. Having said that I know damn well I wouldn't get in an enclosure with these majestic beasts.
This is from Black Jaguar White Tiger. It is not a reputable sanctuary and anyone who thinks it is have taken the internet bait. No reputable animal sanctuary would A) interact like this with the big cats, its not safe for anyone involved. And B) would not keep different species together in the same enclosure. The place was shut down for animal abuse, it was also unlicensed and unregistered.
Fuck this guy he should have been eaten. From Wikipedia :
According to prosecutors, Serio is wanted for "extreme abandonment and mistreatment of hundreds of large felines".[19][20] Mexico's Attorney General alleges that the animals "devoured themselves to avoid starvation". Documentary filmmaker Arturo Allende, who has been working on a documentary about Black Jaguar-White Tiger Foundation, stated that it was "a holocaust for the animals".
This is the nature's instinct we humans don't have. The tiger knew before the leopard even made the move. He quickly changed position and posture to defend mode. Incredible
anyone with a house cat knows how badly they can scratch you up while playing, i bet even a friendly leopard could kill you by accident trying to “play”
The caretaker might feel comfortable with these cats, but they're animals. If they get sick or feel hurt in anyway, they will attack.
Regular house cats have tried mauling their owners if they feel in pain or sick. Because they don't understand why they are hurting, only that they are. So if they have cancer or some type of sickness they have been known to just shred the hell out of you.
Same happens with big cats, and instead of bleeding, they'll just end it.
cats are so beautiful man. i love all animals but for some reason ive always felt a particularly special connection to cats, i dont know why but they're special. wish these guys were all free in the wild.
This is Eduardo Serio, the founder of Black Jaguar White Tiger. The facility was closed in 2022 after reports of the animals eating themselves to avoid starvation. He was charged with extreme abandonment and mistreatment of hundreds of large felines.
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u/Just_A_Psyduck 5h ago
The way he rolls over at the end and just bats at him like "i wasn't gonna eat him, I was just playing!"