Predator Pets (2018) Season 1 Episode 11
Predator Pets (2018) Season 1 Episode 11
Gane Doyle Jr from the WA Reptile Park has been bitten by almost all of them, but he still enjoys an extraordinary relationship with his Predator Pets. We'll also meet the officers whose job it is to capture stray exotics in Riverside County and we talk to the team at a sanctuary for former performing animals who have some very clear opinions about keeping exotics in captivity.
#documentary #animals
Gane Doyle Jr from the WA Reptile Park has been bitten by almost all of them, but he still enjoys an extraordinary relationship with his Predator Pets. We'll also meet the officers whose job it is to capture stray exotics in Riverside County and we talk to the team at a sanctuary for former performing animals who have some very clear opinions about keeping exotics in captivity.
#documentary #animals
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Humans have had a close relationship with animals for thousands of years.
00:26Scientists agree the domestic dog has been a trusted pet for around 15,000 years, and
00:31cats became part of the household from 10,000 years ago.
00:35And now it's estimated there are at least 600 million pet cats in the world.
00:41Exotic pets have also been kept for thousands of years.
00:46It's well documented that the Egyptians kept baboons as pets, and exotic animals kept in
00:51the home feature in many ancient texts.
00:55In modern times, the keeping of exotic pets has increased.
00:59A staggering statistic is that there are more tigers in the U.S. alone than there are in
01:04the wild.
01:09Animal owners truly believe they are playing a role in preserving the numbers of exotic
01:13animals.
01:14But on the other side of the debate, there are those who believe it is a cruel practice
01:19to keep any animals in captivity.
01:22This series explores the issues from both sides, from those who know the dangers, but
01:30see the benefits, to others who condemn the keeping of exotic pets.
01:35Our stories follow.
01:55His mum actually has put me in hospital for 24 hours, where she bit me when I was feeding
02:04and damaged a tendon.
02:06And if I release any pressure off him, he will know that, he'll feel it, and he will
02:12then react to that.
02:15Extremely strong.
02:17Extremely strong.
02:18You can stress him out.
02:19Too much, yeah.
02:20But when he's that little, he's okay, because they're not going to attack you just because
02:27you're there.
02:28But if you land on him, get too close, it's like anything, you're in their space, they're
02:31going to let you know.
02:32But look at that.
02:33It's beautiful, isn't it?
02:34Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
02:35Okay, yeah, okay.
02:36Okay.
02:37I might put him back so he doesn't stress out too much.
02:46Australia has a reputation as having some of the most dangerous animals in the world.
02:53King Doyle has been bitten by almost all of them.
02:56I'm not pulling out the other olive, though, because we'd have a lot more blood shots.
03:07At over 12 feet long, the olive python is Australia's second largest snake.
03:13And although it's not venomous, it regularly preys on rock wallabies and even small crocodiles,
03:19ambushing them from under the water.
03:22These have got, of course, large teeth, there's over 100 teeth in the mouth on one of these.
03:30Very, very strong, extremely strong snake that can make you feel uncomfortable.
03:35This one here has wrapped around my neck once and made me feel quite uncomfortable.
03:42Now, one of the things that we do here so that the snake knows it's going to be picked
03:46up and not being fed is we use our hat.
03:48That's why we always wear hats.
03:52He now knows, because they are intelligent, he now knows he's not getting fed.
03:58The danger is not from the snake's razor sharp teeth.
04:02It's the sheer strength.
04:03If that wraps around your neck, it can cause you to black out without any problems.
04:09I can feel the strength around my throat at the moment.
04:15He wants to go back to his warmth.
04:19Extremely strong snake.
04:25This particular snake, I had him out at the other end of the shed just doing a display
04:31and he reached up using me as a perch and I could feel myself blacking out because he
04:36put so much pressure on my neck, it was slowing the blood circulation off to me, to my brain
04:42and I started to feel a bit woozy.
04:45We're going.
04:46I'm trying to shut the door back in.
04:49Gain and his father run the family business, the WA Reptile Park in Perth, Western Australia.
04:57He's grown up living alongside Australia's apex predators, venomous snakes, crocodiles
05:02and dingoes.
05:04Not all the animals here are deadly, but the majority can do some serious damage.
05:10There are some you could keep as pets, at your own risk.
05:16There are some pythons that have a few attitude problems and want to bite or wrap around,
05:20you've just got to be aware of all that, but you know, as a pet they're pretty easy to
05:24keep.
05:25I mean, Lacey there, he's really easy to keep and he's quite friendly, but there's always
05:31that chance that something can go, something can go wrong.
05:35I like him.
05:36Yeah?
05:37Yeah.
05:38What have we got here?
05:40A lot of people in the eastern states have these as pets.
05:48And this one here has bitten me.
05:52Got very sharp teeth, but that was only because I was feeding it and it missed the, it missed
05:56the rats that I was feeding it that day and grabbed all five fingers on one hand.
06:03Your claws and the teeth are extremely sharp.
06:08When this fella bit me, again, it was only by accident, he did do a bit of slice and
06:14dice on my fingers, but there was no, he didn't cause me any problems to go to hospital or
06:19anything like that.
06:20Yeah.
06:21I may have needed stitches, but I stayed home.
06:22I don't like going to hospital too often.
06:26Oh, this one's pretty cool.
06:28When you actually feed this fella, we give him a scratch on the back and he arcs up the
06:34back like he, like he enjoys it.
06:36Emotion, no.
06:38Personality, yes.
06:41This fella has his own little personality.
06:43And yeah, look at that.
06:46He's beautiful, isn't he?
06:48Closer related to the Komodo dragon, Lacey may be a friendly monitor, but the tools he
06:54uses to prey on small mammals and birds in the wild leave their mark on his handlers
06:59too.
07:00He's just using it and he's just hanging on, so the points go through.
07:04I mean, our skin's soft compared to them, so that's, yeah, you get that all the time.
07:09I never worry about any little scratches or anything like that.
07:13It's part of the job, you know, getting bitten or scratched or whatever, you know, it happens.
07:20It's not the nicest of feelings, you know, being bitten, yeah, but yeah, with this type
07:26of job, it can happen if you make, you know, you don't pay attention to what you're doing.
07:32A small scratch or even a large bite from a monitor lizard or a crocodile may not bother
07:38Gaine too much, but surely a tag from one of the world's deadliest snakes would slow
07:43him down.
07:44Australia have 17 to the top 20, and this is one of them.
07:49And this is one of our local snakes for Western Australia, which is a dugong, which is a brown,
07:55but it's our local one around the Perth area.
07:58This one here got me in 2016.
08:02He wasn't in this cage, he was in another cage, and I was cleaning him out, and I had
08:06the words go through my head, turn on the light, and I didn't turn the light on.
08:10I hooked him, and he grabbed me.
08:13So I don't know which end I was trying to lift, and he actually bit two fingers, and
08:17he envenomated me.
08:18It was about 25 minutes before I felt any effects, and then spent 30-odd hours in hospital
08:25getting one lot of antivenin, and my kidneys stopped working.
08:30I guess now that we've got a special relationship, he's had a piece of me, and I've had a piece
08:37of him.
08:38He's just, yeah, just an extremely nice, nice snake.
08:44Not only does Gaine still consider the snake that could have killed him to be an extremely
08:49nice snake, he takes full responsibility for the incident.
08:53He knows only too well how serious the consequences can be if you make a mistake with a deadly
08:59predator.
09:00If you get too, you know, a bit blasé or anything like that, and you take your brain
09:06off, out of gear, you can make a mistake, and every now and then you do that, and some
09:12can be fatal, or you can end up being crooked.
09:14I mean, I've made two mistakes with two venomous snakes in 40-odd years, and yeah, it's knocked
09:21this around and all the rest of it, but my fault, not the snake's fault, because I was
09:27choosing to do something that I shouldn't have done.
09:30While it's certainly unconventional, Gaine forms rewarding bonds with animals that many
09:35would never consider having as pets.
09:38Well, I used to have my first tiger snake, you know, when he passed away, I was quite
09:48upset, because I used to go to do displays and talk to these kids and say, instead of,
09:55on theory, I now had practical experience of what a snakebite felt like, this was the
09:59one that did it, and yeah, when he passed away, I was quite upset, because we had that
10:06special relationship, that bond of, that was my first bite, again, that was my fault, but
10:12you know, it was still like, I've now, one of the people had been bitten by a venomous
10:17snake and survived.
10:19This one's bitten you as well?
10:20This one has bitten me as well.
10:21But it's still a nice snake?
10:22It's still a nice snake, yeah.
10:26And in a very Captain Hook moment, we meet the mother of the crocodile we saw earlier,
10:32the one that sent Gaine to the hospital and could have easily taken his hand.
10:37She bit me when I was doing a feeding display in here with 45 kids, and it was the first
10:45chicken of the day, and I normally feed around 12 o'clock, but I decided to do it later.
10:51And when I put my hand over, with the tongs, because we used tongs for these little fellas,
10:56had a chicken in the end of the tong, it saw the hand and just grabbed hold of the hand.
11:02I went through all the scenarios of what should I do to get it off?
11:05And I thought if I pulled my arm up and put it on the balcony, that see if she would release,
11:11but then I realised, with those teeth that they slice, she would have done more damage.
11:16So I just hung there and just waited.
11:19Our eyes met, so we had a moment for a little bit, and then eventually she let go and slipped
11:24straight back in the water.
11:26I swapped hands and continued on feeding him.
11:30It severed 80% of one of my tendons and went through the knuckle.
11:34So it wasn't too bad.
11:36If it had rolled or twisted, it could have severed the tendons or severed a few more,
11:41but I was all okay.
11:42I didn't lose any fingers or any movement, yeah, just out of action.
11:46But does this croc remember his human prey, like the crocodile nemesis remembered Captain
11:52Hook in Peter Pan?
11:54I think she does.
11:55I mean, she's had a taste of me, this one.
11:58She knows what I taste like, so yeah, she likes me.
12:01Young girl.
12:02That's my girl.
12:08Ben's experience working with crocs means, despite their previous encounter, he's not
12:13concerned about getting too close this time.
12:16She stays there, but I'm not moving any further to her.
12:24She's already let me know that she doesn't want me any closer by a bit of a breathing
12:28and huffing at me.
12:30I feel quite safe here.
12:32She's not going to move any further from where she is.
12:35And again, it's the colder weather, and if she was warm, she'd be straight into the pond
12:41if I was getting too close.
12:43They're not going to try and attack.
12:46I've been closer to one and actually fed one closer, and it did get me when it jumped up
12:53when feeding.
12:54It jumped up, missed it, and just caught me on the hand, and I was right next to it feeding
13:03it.
13:05Yep, that's the boy and the girl.
13:08They're the dingoes.
13:10Go and see them.
13:13Australia's wild dogs, dingoes, are sometimes kept as pets, but most owners will tell you
13:19that they can never be completely domesticated.
13:23This is Blondie, and she's a good girl.
13:27When we first got Blondie, she broke out of her pen.
13:31We found a very small hole, about six foot off the ground, and climbed out.
13:36But she's so blonde, she showed me where the hole was so I could fix it.
13:40Isn't it, girl?
13:42Eh?
13:44Eh?
13:45Maybe we'll go and see Max.
13:48Eh?
13:49Later, later.
13:50Come in, Max.
13:51Come on.
13:53Eh?
13:55He was brought to us, to the park, because the people, their situation changed.
14:02We normally don't take them on if they're over 18 months old, because their personalities
14:09are really set.
14:10But Max was really good.
14:12He bonded to us very easily, so I decided to take him on.
14:17I don't 100% trust him, but yeah, I can pick when he's not right.
14:24Come.
14:25Eh?
14:29The only thing with dingoes, you can't train them.
14:31They don't come when you call, but they're highly intelligent.
14:35The dingoes are as close to pets as any of the animals here at the WA Reptile Park, but
14:41Gain remains alert when around them.
14:44They still have that killer instinct.
14:46They'll still knock off other animals.
14:50Yeah, people do have them as pets, but they've just got to be aware that they're totally
14:56different.
14:57If you really bring them up right, they are extremely nice pets.
15:02But you've just got to treat them nicely, because they don't ever forget.
15:09Having been strangled by a python and bitten by crocodiles, lizards and deadly venomous
15:14snakes, there's still one animal here that Gain won't get close to.
15:19I never trust a wombat.
15:21Never turn your back on a wombat.
15:23They are dangerous.
15:26It's automatic get out.
15:28Especially the males.
15:29Breeding season, they change, and they will attack.
15:33And they jump up, and it's pretty dangerous for a bloke, because they can jump up about
15:38a meter high, and if you're facing a wombat and it jumps up a meter high and grabs what
15:42you don't want it to grab, it's going to hurt.
15:45It has happened in the eastern states.
15:47I've had a lot of microsurgery.
15:49But yeah.
15:51Um, nah.
15:53I'll go and play with a croc any day.
16:00You know, some people don't want to live next to a 400-pound pot-bellied pig.
16:05So, in fairness, when you do live in kind of a built-up city, you know, choose the right pet.
16:13Riverside County Animal Services are an animal shelter organization and vet clinic servicing
16:19one of the largest counties in California.
16:22We cover everything from the city of Riverside, which is a large metropolitan area, all the
16:28way out to areas out in the Coachella Valley, which are just undeveloped, open areas of
16:33natural desert.
16:34So, we get a little bit of everything.
16:37Each year, they respond to thousands of calls from the public, picking up stray dogs, cats,
16:42and the occasional, more unusual lost pet.
16:47Riverside County Animal Services, we are a sheltering service to all the stray animals
16:53that come in.
16:54And, of course, we handle a lot of field service work.
16:58That's our officers out in the field retrieving mostly stray dogs and stray cats, and the
17:04occasional stray crazy thing, you know, whether it be the occasional monkey, alligator, Burmese
17:12python, or somebody keeping a deer as a pet.
17:16We got a call one afternoon that a woman, her two dogs had cornered an alligator in
17:21her backyard.
17:22My dispatcher gets on the radio, dispatches it to me, and I kind of made a smart-aleck
17:27remark of, sure, I'll go pick up the iguana, thinking that they just saw an iguana and
17:31thought it was an alligator.
17:32I rolled up to the house, got out of my truck, see two dogs barking at something in the corner,
17:36walk over, tell the woman to grab her dogs, and sure enough, there's an alligator in her
17:40backyard.
17:41It's interesting because we get a lot of different snakes that come from, like, where
17:45they come into people's yards, but we have interesting calls, too, where someone will
17:51call for a snake like this.
17:52I had a snake just like this, southern Pacific, that a person called us that they found this
17:59snake in their yard, and they were in the middle of the city of Riverside, and they
18:03conveniently had it contained in a terrarium.
18:07And so when I GPSed the address to try to re-release the snake, I was just thinking
18:13to myself, there's no way that this snake ended up in the middle of downtown Riverside
18:20surrounded by blocks and blocks and blocks of residential housing.
18:25So they obviously went on a trip to the mountains, who knows what, took the snake out of the
18:31wild again, and then probably the wife or something was like, hey, the heck no, you're
18:36not keeping that snake.
18:38And so they called, you know, animal control and said, oh, I found it in my yard, you know.
18:46But stuff like that happens fairly frequently.
18:51You know, most of the time it's a legitimate call where you can see, you know, their house
18:56is butted up against, you know, natural landscape, and it's like, yeah, if you're going to build
19:01your home on their habitat, they're going to come into your yard.
19:04But occasionally we get these strange calls.
19:09I personally got one call where someone had a rattlesnake that they had caught and taken
19:15it home, stuck it in a china cabinet, put duct tape across the door of the china cabinet
19:21and stuck a brick in front of it and had it in there for a week.
19:24And then they quickly realized that they couldn't safely open the door to feed it and didn't
19:27know how to care for it.
19:29So they ended up calling for help, and I ended up having to go in and remove the rattlesnake
19:34out of a china cabinet.
19:36So that was a pretty poor, poorly thought out plan.
19:40And it's often poor planning and lack of knowledge that puts exotic pet owners and their neighbors
19:46in danger.
19:49The animal, when it ends up doing something really bad, the person always says, but he
19:53was always so calm and never showed any signs of aggression.
19:58But it just takes one time, right, for that person to suffer serious injuries, and in
20:04some cases, death.
20:05So the onus is really on that person that owns the exotic, legally, if they have it
20:11permitted, to protect their fellow neighbors.
20:18In 2009, a 330-pound pet tiger escaped from her enclosure and was discovered in the backyard
20:25of a very surprised 79-year-old woman in Ingram, Texas.
20:31A 275-pound pet cougar escaped from his cage in a Florida backyard menagerie and killed
20:38a neighbor's dog in 2012.
20:41And in 2017, a classroom of third graders were surprised to find a four-foot-long boa
20:48constrictor inside their classroom.
20:51Officers believe the snake may have been an escaped pet from a nearby house.
20:57Well, you know, when people are having a pet that's a dangerous, you know, they know how
21:03to handle it, but the neighbor doesn't or the little kid next door has no clue on, you
21:09know, that you have a dangerous exotic pet, that's where you as the pet owner need to
21:17make sure, just like, you know, in the dog world, if you have a large dog, you want to
21:23be responsible, make sure it doesn't get out.
21:25Same thing, if you have a dangerous exotic animal, and it doesn't mean it has to be a
21:30big animal, a monkey, for example, can bite people, which had happened in one of our cities
21:36that we had to respond to.
21:39A monkey bit a person at a pizza place because the person thought it would be fun to have
21:44a monkey on their shoulder at a pizza place.
21:47And so you got to draw the line sometimes with having a cool pet that's cool for you
21:55to have, but making sure your community members are protected and safe, and that would be
22:01our message to those folks is make sure that exotic is not going to harm anyone.
22:08One of the most common exotic animal escape artists is the snake, and the Riverside team
22:14are often called to retrieve venomous reptiles from suburban areas.
22:19So both of these guys are from the local area that were brought in by our animal control
22:24officers, and I keep them purely for the purpose of using them for training, for rattlesnake
22:30safety and handling.
22:32So this one is a western diamondback rattlesnake, and how we came across this one was that there
22:42was a woman in Palm Desert who had to be put into a care facility, and when they went
22:50in to get her out of the house, she had this snake in an aquarium in her house, and it
23:00was a little 10-gallon aquarium.
23:02The snake was a really tiny little baby, probably just born that year, and so it was a little
23:0810-gallon aquarium with a fish toy in it, like you would see in a fish aquarium, like
23:17a sunken ship toy.
23:19So she was trying to keep it as a pet, and so because we don't know the exact location
23:27of where it came from, you can't just take it and relocate it and throw it back outside.
23:34So for us, the only options are either you find a home for it with a research facility,
23:43or maybe an educational institution, otherwise it has to be euthanized.
23:50Unless we know of the natural area where it came from and we could relocate it within
23:55its home range.
23:57While Kim provides Riverside officers with venomous snake handling training, there's
24:01no way they can train for every possible animal encounter.
24:06Burmese python is a common home pet, or at least in the state of California it is.
24:12Another county officer, she got a call in the middle of the night that a 30-foot snake
24:15was going through this person's front yard.
24:18She shows up on scene, calls me in the middle of the night, wakes me up, and says,
24:22hey Dylan, I need some assistance, I have a 30-foot snake.
24:25So I thought she was just joking with me at first, and sometimes we joke with each other
24:29and give each other prank calls and stuff like that.
24:31But I made it down there and sure enough there was a large snake under these people's,
24:36I believe it was a eucalyptus bush that was going alongside the fence line.
24:41All I did was grab it with a catch pole, got that around its head, the snake obviously
24:47coiled up around the pole, and then we just carried it to the truck like a rotisserie rack.
24:52One person on one side, one person on the other side, we put it in the truck like that,
24:55we let go of the loop, and it hung out in the truck for the way back.
24:59You know, a lot of the training for some of these exotics kind of happens like that moment in time.
25:06You don't really respond to a domesticated deer call every day.
25:11When it comes to like a Burmese python, it's, you know, the officers, they're really good
25:16with their control stick, or the catch pole as it's known.
25:19Some of these are just really kind of bizarre calls that they just have to use their instincts.
25:26Bear in mind, the officers are dealing with some of the most vicious dogs that you might see
25:31walking the street.
25:33Some of them are bully breed dogs, some of them are very aggressive,
25:38and these officers don't scare easily.
25:40In fact, I think the Burmese python scared that one officer more so than a large pit bull
25:47coming at her.
25:49Those are just such weird, odd calls, and you don't really know how to handle the Burmese python,
25:54and you don't want to get choked to death.
25:56So those types of calls are sort of like, you know, you learn as you go sometimes.
26:03Every call out comes with a risk, and Riverside officers can just never be sure
26:08what they'll encounter when they arrive at a scene.
26:10At the time of it, it's a little hectic and scary,
26:15just because you don't know if it's fully domesticated.
26:18A lot of people, they have these quote-unquote wild animals for pets
26:21and never socialize them properly, so sometimes they will bite
26:24or do other things that aren't foreseen.
26:27Much of what Riverside County Animal Services does
26:30also involves educating the public about choosing the right pet
26:34and then providing that pet with the appropriate care.
26:38Those folks that like, for example, to have a Burmese python,
26:41sometimes they get them when they're young,
26:43and then they're not really fully educating themselves
26:46on just how large those snakes can get.
26:49And it's not the easiest pet to care for once it's an adult pet.
26:53I mean, they get 20 to 30, you know, they get very long and very wide,
26:58and when you go out of town and you ask your buddy to, you know, feed your pet,
27:05make sure the buddy knows how to close the tank of the Burmese python securely,
27:11because that's when you get into problems where, you know,
27:14the next-door neighbor finds out that you have a 20-foot Burmese python.
27:18Educating the general public on exotics is important
27:22because some people like to have interesting pets,
27:26and then when it comes to animals like a tegu lizard,
27:30quite an amazing critter, but they can get big too,
27:35and your neighbor may not want to see that tegu lizard knocking on their front door.
27:41So, you know, it's really making sure that that exotic pet
27:47is going to stay in your property and not wander off,
27:51because that can really scare the heck out of somebody
27:54if they are finding out that you own that tegu lizard.
27:58Another one, I had a tegu running down Wood Road.
28:02Somebody called for a large lizard in the road, so I arrived on scene.
28:05Sure enough, the body was probably only about two feet long,
28:09but the tails were about three feet long,
28:12and their tail is stronger than heck, so they can whip you and cut you open with that.
28:17It's kind of like keeping some of the more aggressive dog breeds.
28:24If you've got a responsible owner that knows what they're doing,
28:27you can keep some of those safely.
28:30And then there's some things that you just shouldn't have.
28:33When we walk into a house and somebody's caught a rattlesnake from out in the desert,
28:36and it's in an aquarium, it's a venomous snake.
28:39Nobody should be keeping those as pets.
28:42Boa constrictor, there are responsible people out there that can keep them as a pet,
28:48but it's not a pet for everybody.
28:50Most people probably don't have the skills, the ability, the finances,
28:54just the space to keep something that can potentially get as large as those are going to get.
28:59We're in the business of promoting responsible pet ownership,
29:03whether you own a dog, a cat, or a rabbit, or a horse, a tortoise.
29:09We always want people to love that animal and make it part of your family.
29:14We don't really have any strong opinion one way or the other when it comes to exotic pets.
29:20We just don't like when somebody no longer is interested in being the pet owner of said exotic pet,
29:28and then they just release it into the wild,
29:31scaring their neighbors or also shamefully allowing that animal to suffer
29:36because it could get hit by a car, just like a dog or a cat,
29:40or it goes off into the wild and gets killed by other critters.
29:43But it's shameful when the pet loses its charm,
29:47and then they think, oh, I'll just dump it in the riverbed, or, you know, I'll just release it.
29:53If you have an exotic pet, know how long that pet will be in your life.
29:58A tortoise, for example, can live 70, 80, 90, 100 years.
30:02So you might want to put the tortoise in your family,
30:07so you might want to put the tortoise in your will
30:11and know that your son is going to be caring for the next 50 years of that tortoise's life.
30:15That's the only thing we'd like to share with people that are interested in exotic pets,
30:20is know it's a part of your family.
30:23And when it loses its charm, don't forget, you're still the pet parent.
30:27The officers at Riverside County Animal Services have dealt with everything
30:32from escaped emus to roaming reptiles.
30:35And when it comes to exotic animals, they've seen firsthand
30:39that too little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
30:44I think that, at least here in California, for the most part, with stuff that could kill a human being,
30:48I think that those who have them that do it legally are able, you know, okay.
30:54But they have to reach such a bar, there's such a high bar for them to get to those proper permits and stuff.
31:00It's, you know, I'm kind of okay with those people.
31:03It's the backyard person who doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't have that training
31:08and hasn't gone through all the permitting process and the inspection process
31:11to try and keep a lion or a tiger or, you know, something else along those lines
31:17that it's a recipe for disaster.
31:24You can go to any zoo, any private place in the United States or around the world,
31:29and as soon as there's a fence, you don't have to treat them like a tiger.
31:32They're not predators anymore. They're just beautiful, interesting, and here for our enjoyment.
31:40From the fashionable Victorian menagerie to the animal stunts we see in modern movies,
31:46exotic animals have long performed for our enjoyment and entertainment.
31:51But what happens to the animals when they can no longer perform?
31:56Many end up at sanctuaries like the Performing Animal Welfare Society,
32:01a 2,300-acre natural habitat wildlife sanctuary located near San Andreas, California.
32:09This unique facility is currently home to nine elephants, four lions, one black leopard,
32:14seven bears, 22 tigers, and co-founder and president Ed Stewart.
32:21This is Kim, and she's in there with Roy and Claire.
32:25She's 15 years old, came out of a roadside zoo in New Hampshire,
32:32and was scheduled to go to the pet industry.
32:36Somebody intercepted her and brought her to us when they were just cubs.
32:41Hi. Hi.
32:43Hi, I know.
32:45You're a wonderful girl. Yeah, you're good.
32:49PAWS provides homes for retired or mistreated animal entertainers
32:54and investigates reports of abused performing and exotic animals.
32:59Unsurprisingly, Ed has strong feelings about exotic animal ownership of any kind.
33:05I know that there are some good facilities, and some are good, some are bad,
33:10but the ultimate goal for all of these places is a little murky to me.
33:17Is it to return animals to the wild? Is it to teach people about animals?
33:23I think all of it is ineffective.
33:27In the history of the world, nobody's taken a captive tiger and put it into the wild.
33:32And with the shrinking habitat, it's never going to happen.
33:36So reintroduction is a pipe dream. It's not going to happen.
33:42And while some may argue that captivity is a valid way of preserving a species
33:47or educating the public about conservation,
33:50others, like Ed, believe that captivity changes an animal
33:54to the extent that it is no longer anything like its ancestors.
33:59Our mission is to give the animals that we take the best life we can give them,
34:04knowing that we can't give them a normal life.
34:08We can't give her a natural life.
34:10She's 15 years old, and she has never had to catch her dinner,
34:15never had to hunt for her food.
34:18We have provided everything.
34:20You put an animal in an enclosure, whether it's a big enclosure or a small enclosure,
34:25you have totally changed their life.
34:28She's an apex predator.
34:30She would hunt almost constantly, looking for enough food.
34:34She would be raising babies.
34:36She would have an incredible responsibility in the wild,
34:39and she would rely only on herself.
34:42Their natural history is so ingrained in them to perform their duties,
34:46and you take all that away in captivity.
34:49As soon as you put a fence up, you create disrespect for that animal.
34:56It's something of a contradiction for Ed.
34:58On one hand, he's against keeping wild animals in captivity.
35:02On the other, he keeps captive animals.
35:06We're honestly looking at these animals every day.
35:10We really want to do the best we can for them,
35:13but the best thing you can do for them is not promote it in captivity
35:18because they're just not designed to live captive,
35:21and it's a black-and-white issue.
35:24So we don't look at her or him like a tiger.
35:27We look at them as an individual.
35:30They're so far removed from a real tiger in the wild.
35:34We know we have to do absolutely the best we can for them
35:38and give them the nicest place we can to live and the best vet care.
35:45But if we had a breeding pair, I would be heart sick
35:51if I was the one responsible for creating a litter of baby tigers
35:57that would have to live their whole life in a cage.
36:00It's just basic freedom for a tiger to be wild.
36:06Paw's director of veterinary services, Dr. Jackie Guy,
36:10has the job of ensuring that all the animals are kept healthy.
36:14Many of the problems she sees are a direct result of captivity.
36:19Animals in captivity, especially wild animals in captivity,
36:22can develop all sorts of problems that are unique to captivity
36:26that aren't found in wild populations.
36:29So as a captive wildlife veterinarian,
36:31I would say probably 95% of the problems that I'm seeing in my patients
36:38are related to captivity in one way or another.
36:41An example of that is, this is a tiger.
36:45These are radiographs or x-rays of a tiger's spine.
36:49He's an adult. He's not an old man by any means, but he's a mature adult.
36:55And he's got significant, significant arthritis
36:59that would not be seen in a wild tiger.
37:03This is an early onset of really, really severe arthritis.
37:08And the problems Dr. Jackie sees associated with captivity
37:12are not just physical health issues.
37:15Confinement is very hard on animals, regardless of the size of the cage.
37:21Being confined brings with it all sorts of challenges
37:25for especially formerly wild animals or wild animals.
37:29Wild animals are not domesticated.
37:31In other words, they're not used to being held captive.
37:35And so there are instincts that they have that they're not able to express,
37:40and that leads to frustration.
37:42It leads to a lot of behavioral problems, a lot of anxiety and stress,
37:47which sometimes they'll end up pacing or tossing their heads
37:51or doing various repetitive behaviors.
37:54And we've all seen that.
37:56We've all seen a pacing bear in a cage or a tiger in a cage.
38:00That's abnormal. They don't do that in the wild.
38:03Also, a really sad thing is when an exotic animal begins to self-mutilate
38:08or damage itself, pull its hair out or pull its feathers out.
38:13And that's an unfortunate consequence of stress, of being in captivity.
38:20Winston, one of the sanctuary's current bear residents,
38:23has only recently stopped displaying those telltale signs of captive boredom.
38:29Captivity, it's a challenge.
38:32When you look at California mountains, that's where they should live.
38:35The Smoky Mountains, Florida, they're all over the United States.
38:41And when they're in captivity a lot of times, they're one of the worst pacers,
38:46one of the worst at rocking their heads.
38:48They just don't have anything to do.
38:52As former pets or performers, the animals here are accustomed to being around humans.
38:58And many involved in the exotic animal ownership debate
39:01believe that they should continue to enjoy human companionship.
39:05Big mouth.
39:10Hey girls.
39:14Mara, let go.
39:16Come on, girl, let go.
39:19Come on, chica.
39:22What a good girl.
39:24What a good girl. Mara, let go.
39:29Come on, young lady.
39:32Good girl.
39:36Nice day.
39:39Oh boy.
39:42Oh boy.
39:49See their teeth, they're made for eating.
39:52You can see it in there.
39:55They're made for eating branches and hard brush
39:58and eating a very low protein, high fiber diet.
40:06We don't ever teach them tricks just to teach them a trick,
40:10but in order to check their teeth, it's good to be able to handle them a little bit.
40:14We don't go inside with them, but we do it from the outside.
40:18Elephants actually can be really, really excellent patients.
40:22They're very intelligent. They enjoy interacting with us.
40:26And we use positive reinforcement training with our elephants,
40:30meaning they choose to participate in their own health care.
40:34And they're rewarded for that. They're never punished.
40:37And so, consequently, it's actually quite easy for me to provide veterinary care
40:42for such an intelligent species.
40:44They're very easy to work with.
40:46They voluntarily will allow me to draw blood, take x-rays, work on their feet,
40:52even more invasive things like collecting a small biopsy, things like that.
40:56They have learned that we're not here to punish or harm them in any way,
41:01so they're actually really good patients.
41:04But not all of Dr. Guy's patients are as cooperative as the elephants.
41:11It can definitely be dangerous being around dangerous exotic animals,
41:15dangerous wild animals in captivity or free-ranging for anybody,
41:19including an owner of an animal, but certainly for the veterinarian.
41:24And so, again, it takes somebody like myself who's had specialized training
41:29to know how to safely treat these animals,
41:32but there's always a potential for, you know, somebody to get hurt.
41:37And although Ed feels that captive exotics are no longer the predators
41:41they would be in the wild, even he has no doubt they remain potentially deadly.
41:48Predators know that they're predators.
41:50They don't know why, maybe, that they're focused on vulnerable things,
41:55but they do.
41:57Somebody with crutches, somebody with a wheelchair, somebody who's lagging behind,
42:03they know, even though they don't have to,
42:07it's just part of their nature to stalk and maybe hunt.
42:14And while many owners of exotic pets do provide for all their needs,
42:18caring for such unusual animals proves too difficult for many,
42:22and they often arrive at sanctuaries with a host of health issues.
42:28We have, right now, the second oldest African elephant in the country living here.
42:35It's almost like a retirement home in some ways, especially for elephants.
42:39You know they're getting old, you know they have arthritis before they get here.
42:45Sometimes they have foot problems, toe problems, infections or bone problems.
42:51And so you just want to give them as many good years as you can.
42:56We, in a sanctuary situation, you rarely see young healthy animals in need of placement.
43:03They are oftentimes the product of almost what I would call a puppy mill for tigers,
43:10where they're just breeding and breeding and breeding,
43:13sometimes for photo shoots and things like that,
43:15with no regard for what happens to them after that function is complete,
43:19when the tiger is too big to handle or too big to use in public contact or films.
43:25A lot of times they're viewed as disposable, and most of them are unhealthy.
43:30They'll come to us with all sorts of issues, vision problems, crooked legs, arthritis,
43:37early kidney disease is very common.
43:40And some of those conditions are genetic,
43:43they're congenital problems that are passed on from generation to generation.
43:49For many animal advocates, freedom is the ultimate goal.
43:53But once an animal is already in captivity, options are limited.
43:59We do what we can, but we can't give them what they should have, and that's their total freedom.
44:04Nothing would make us happier than to release these guys to where they should be.
44:10But the fact is, they would not be able to do it.
44:14They wouldn't have a herd, they wouldn't know what to do.
44:16And they'd probably die within a few weeks, or less.
44:21Okay, we gotta go, we gotta go, you can't eat this whole bucket.
44:26Our happiest times are when we see them up on the hill like this, grazing on fresh green grass.
44:31When you have a sanctuary, you live for moments where the animals are doing something
44:36that they would be doing in the wild.
44:38So if they're in a mud hole, if they're grazing, if they're pushing on a tree,
44:43if they're tearing branches off, those are all kind of rewarding times for us.
44:49But it's not a substitute for the wild.
44:54While Ed may be able to provide the illusion of freedom to the animals in his care,
44:58he's very aware that true freedom is something they'll never know.
45:04If any of these animals could go free, if all of them could go free,
45:07we would load them up tomorrow and take them to the zoo.
45:11We would load them up tomorrow and take them home, take them back and let them go.
45:15And I think it's a responsibility for us to tell people the truth about captivity,
45:20at least our point of view.
45:22And if we don't win the argument, that's okay.
45:25We're not going to beat anybody over the head.
45:27But I think if you take a step back and look at captivity, it hasn't worked.
45:32It's bad for individuals, it's not helping species.
45:36So it's time to change the model.
45:39Go to the woods, go to the creek, turn over some rocks, look at the animals,
45:44teach your children respect for nature, just basic respect for nature.
45:50I think that's the starting point.
45:53And if we can't turn it around, we can't turn it around.
45:55But let's not make tigers and bears and elephants live in enclosures for the rest of their life,
46:02generation after generation after generation, for really no reason.
46:32For more UN videos visit www.un.org