Also, another aspect of having animals being held captive comes from humans keep them as pets. According to WWF, one of the world’s largest populations of tigers exists not in the wild — but in captivity in the United States (PETA, 2016). There populations of captive tigers is the doubled the approximated about 3,200 tigers in the world. Only six percent of the U.S. captive tiger population actually resides in zoos which is recognized by AZA. It should be alarming that more people have private ownership's of tigers than zoos do. WWF reported that in some states, it is easier to buy a tiger than to adopt a dog from a local animal shelter.” Therefore, there need to be better regulation of captive tigers, especially since there is a major threat …show more content…
758 incidents by captive exotic big cats since 1990 in the U.S (Big Cat Rescue, 2016). They believe that it is probably higher because it is not easy to track every single tiger. During these incidents, some of the tigers are even killed to try to protect the humans. There are many reports from incidents where officials shot the tigers to try to kill the human alive. Officials first response is to save the human so they shoot first instead of using a tranquilizer. This causes another controversial debate within today’s society. This is currently being discussed due to the killing of Harambe who was a 400 pound gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 (Eliss and Ross, 2016). Harambe is an endangered speech and a very rare specie. A 4-year old boy ended being in Harambe enclosure and Harambe carried the little boy around his habitat. The officials reacted by killing the gorilla instead of using the tranquilizer, which caused an uproar. They stated that the tranquilizer would take too long to take effects for the gorilla. Their focus was to protect the child from danger. However, the biggest aspect everyone brought up is why are the animals even caged up. Incidents like these could be avoided if wild animals are not held captive (WWF,