Tigers -- hunting, prey and captive feeding.

The feeding of live animals to tigers:

The feeding of live animals to tigers is largely confined to Asia, with the places that practice it contending they are 'training tigers for release into the wild.' Despite this rather lofty claim, there is no scientific basis for the technique, and unsurprisingly, no releases have ever come about.

The various prey animals (usually domestic cattle, pigs, rabbits and chickens) experience great pain and stress. As captive-bred tigers do not know how to make correct kills the act is a long, drawn-out process, usually ending with the stock being killed by human hands rather than with a throat kill from the tiger.

Visitors to this type of safari park can dangle chickens over the tiger pits to assist in the 'training' and buy other animals which are then fed to the tigers. At many of these places, (there are quite a number), visitors can complete their family visit by going onto buy products like tiger bone wine.

Although the selling of tiger -based medicines is supposed to be illegal, policing of these laws in Asia is limited and turning older tigers into wine is viewed as a profitable method to reduce the financial drain on facility resources.

Financing for food and veterinary care in Asian zoos is also very low and it is not unusual for live feeding to be justified based on the fact that it helps cover the feeding costs of organisations which receive no government funding. Other facilities choose to significantly reduce feeding frequency in an effort to save money. One Asian zoo was in such dire straights that only fed its animals every third day.

This topic is covered extensively under the Wild Tigers section (the releasing of captive-bred tigers into the wild).

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