When Fido is a tiger

Do tigers make good pets?

At first. Tiger cubs are cute and playful, and their claws and teeth aren’t sharp enough to hurt a person. That changes quickly, though. Within three years, a tiger can reach 400 to 700 pounds and can kill with a single pounce. Pet tigers have fatally mauled at least nine people in the U.S. in the past five years. “They’re genetically programmed to kill,” said Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society. Even well-behaved tigers are an enormous burden. They eat 10 to 20 pounds of raw meat a day (preferably with internal organs and hair included) and require a lot of space. Evolved to roam 100 miles a day, tigers become very irritable when cooped up. Still, there are now as many as 10,000 pet tigers in the U.S.—about twice the number of tigers left in the wild.

Why do people get them?

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“There are some people who want the biggest gun or the biggest truck,” said Pacelle. “Some people want the biggest, baddest pet.” For others, the allure is novelty, or a desire to connect with nature. The lure is so strong that tiger-cub mills have sprung up in the U.S. to breed the big cats and sell the cubs. Tiger cubs now sell for under $400 on the Internet, less than many purebred dogs. And tigers make up just a small part of the exotic-pet industry. In addition to every type of big cat, Americans annually buy and sell $15 billion worth of bears, wolves, alligators, chimpanzees, parrots, cockatiels, and almost anything else that can be crated and shipped.

Is this legal?

Federal law bars the importation of wild animals—but smuggling is rampant. Once smuggled in, exotic species are bred here, and their offspring are exempt from federal importation law. Instead, the possession and sale of these animals falls under a confusing patchwork of state and local regulations. Legislation before Congress would ban interstate commerce of dangerous exotics, but for now the matter is up to individual states. Twelve states ban virtually all exotic pets; another seven have partial bans. Texas has almost no regulations at all, which is why half the pet tigers in the U.S. live there. In all states, endangered species—such as Bengal, Siberian, and Javan tigers—cannot be sold or kept as pets, but domestic breeders have mixed tiger bloodlines so thoroughly that the 10,000 pet tigers here are considered a subspecies not covered by law. That also means that raising them does not help preserve the species. “These animals are never going to be returned to the wild, and they couldn’t survive there anyway,” said Richard Lattis, director of New York’s Bronx Zoo.

So what happens to them?

Most exotic pets end up in animal sanctuaries or are simply abandoned when they get too large or unruly. One typical shelter gets 10 to 15 calls a week from people wanting to drop off their Vietnamese potbellied pigs, which are no longer as trendy as they were in the mid-1980s. By some estimates, only 10 percent of wild pets still live with their owners after two years. About 60 percent die within the first month of purchase.

What is the most popular exotic pet?

By far, the ferret. Descended from the European polecat, ferrets are in the weasel family. There are 8 million to 10 million ferrets in the U.S., with fiercely loyal owners who have been lobbying for years to have them removed from the exotics list. Americans also own 7.3 million pet reptiles, including snakes and lizards, and 15,000 primates, mostly monkeys. In addition to tigers, here are an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 other big cats in private hands. Many of these creatures can be tamed and taught to obey commands, but they are still considered wild; true domestication takes thousands of years of breeding. Not all wild animals are vicious—ferrets are less temperamental than many dogs—but they can be dangerous in other ways. Ninety percent of reptiles carry salmonella, causing 93,000 human infections each year. A similar percentage of the popular macaque monkeys carry herpes B and can transmit it through their saliva. Last summer, 72 people contracted monkey pox, a variant of smallpox, from pet prairie dogs, which caught the disease from a giant Gambian rat also headed for the pet market.

Can the exotic-pet trade be stopped?

It’s unlikely. Even if new laws are passed, black markets will always exist. Exotic-pet advocates say irresponsible owners like New Yorker Antoine Yates give all of them a bad name, and that animal attacks make the news precisely because they are so rare. “If there are 15,000 large cats in private hands, where are all the terrible accidents?” says Jeanne Hall, president of the Phoenix Exotic Wildlife Association. “Most of us are not lunatics.” Exotic-pet owners say they have a right to own any animal they like—and that even if there is some risk of being mauled or infected with salmonella, it’s their business. “Why do people ride motorcycles?” asks animal dealer Pat Hoctor. “Hell, it’s a lot more dangerous than raising exotic animals.”

Do-it-yourself zoos