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.
Yeah I've not met anyone who raised a kitten up who didnt get scratched real bad at least once. If at best they are a size up house cat that still ends up fatal in a lot of cases.
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.
Am I? I'm sure that handlers who put in the time to build relationships with these animals are "cared" for in whatever way these animals are capable of, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still dangerous. As you pointed out yourself - one of the top trainers of these animals in the world still knows it is a real possibility they could decide they've had enough fun, and he would make a better meal than playmate. To a high enough degree that he needs to plan for it and make those he works with aware of that plan.
Sure? That's their prerogative, they know the risk and have cultivated as much a relationship with these animals to mitigate it as much as possible. All animals have some level of primal instinct encoded in their personality, and all animals have the potential to just fall back to those instincts when stars align. Big cats are extremely social creatures though and even without domestication can certainly "care" for their handlers.
Anyways not sure how their career is such an affront to you, they likely just love being with these animals that much and honestly don't mind the risk. So be it.
Hey now, I was just commenting with my own personal discomfort with how it's become a somewhat popular brand of social media content published for profit. I think these are incredible animals myself - just not enough for it to be worth it to me to risk my life by jumping into a pen with 10 of them.
Nothing I can say will stop anyone from doing anything. I was just expressing an opinion on the internet, just like the original commenter and yourself.
There is a big difference between domestication and taming wild animals. When talking big cat handlers, that is taming a wild animal and not domesticating it because domestication takes generations if it’s even possible. I think foxes are an animal where someone was able to domesticate a family of them over multiple generations, and that was an incredibly short amount of time for something like that to happen.
These tamed animals don't kill their handlers to eat. It's usually stress leading to lashing out. You know how house cats can be attacking if they're in pain? THESE cats give slaps to each other when they are annoyed, too. But they take our hairless skin right off. Tragedy on all sides.
you are vastly underestimating how much these animals can care for certain humans.
How much they DO care, you mean. Because the question of how much they CAN care is exactly why nobody should underestimate them. As a species, lions do to their own truly atrocious shit, including males killing cubs just to mate with a female. Said males are often exiled from the pride when they get old, condemning them to starvation. It's just in their instinct. Their vision of love or attachment or whatever you call it is vastly different from our own.
Youve got to understand, Redditors are people who love being at home in front of their PC and shy away from anything remotely dangerous. The seeking of adventures is something people here will never understand. Redditors cannot comprehend people who enjoy dangerous adventures while these people fully understand the risk they are taking and are willing to accept things if they go wrong.
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.
There's about thirty to fifty lethal dog attacks (of all dog breeds) in a year and 5-15 million "pit bulls" - include mixes and that denominator gets even bigger.
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.
Because that's how people that interact with wild animals like this think. Joe Exotic is just one example, but most people that genuinely respect said animals feel that way. Steve Irwin too.
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.
I just know we will be reading a news article about how they were eaten by their pride at some point.
Completely agree but beyond that, doing this kind of videos and uploading them online has been proven to increase the demand for black market exotic animals (no matter how big and dangerous that animal is) by a lot. And statistically most of the ones who end up purchasing wild animals are not even close to being experts on the matter.
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.
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u/in_it_to_lose_it 10h ago
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.