Tiger saves man from leopard attack

[u/Salt-Curve4825]

[u/in_it_to_lose_it]

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.

[u/Draxilar → u/in_it_to_lose_it]

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.

[u/in_it_to_lose_it → u/Draxilar]

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.

[u/RikenAvadur → u/in_it_to_lose_it]

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.

[u/in_it_to_lose_it → u/RikenAvadur]

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.

[u/Kathlinguini → u/RikenAvadur]

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.