Tiger selfies: Chinese, Indian tourists lead cruel social media trend that’s driving Thailand’s captive-wildlife industry
As tourists flock to venues such as Tiger Kingdom in Thailand in quest for ever more audacious photos to post on Facebook and Instagram, animal-rights groups claim the internet craze is the cause of a ‘lifetime of suffering’ for the felines
On the shabby outskirts of a seaside resort in Thailand, a Chinese couple in beachwear lean across the back of an adult tiger. The big cat yawns with weary insouciance as two handlers cajole it around its pen and prod it with bamboo sticks. In a smaller enclosure, another couple giggle as they dangle their infant son over a juvenile tiger. Nearby, a tourist in his 20s poses as if in mid roar over two dozing young tigers before – prompted by the handlers – grabbing their tails and putting them up to his mouth, as guffawing friends watch on.
This is the disturbing new face of wildlife tourism in Thailand, where tigers are hand-reared to provide social-media images for foreign visitors. Every day, busloads of tourists are whisked away from their sunloungers to spend an hour or so posing for pictures with unchained, surprisingly docile tigers. By the time they get back to their seaside hotels and settle down for sunset cocktails, many will have already uploaded pictures of themselves with the animals to Facebook and Instagram, to impress – or appal – their friends back home.
Tiger Kingdom, in Phuket, is one of more than a dozen “tiger selfie” attractions that have sprung up across the Southeast Asian country in recent years, driven by booming numbers of package-tour arrivals from mainland China and India, and the desire for ever more audacious social-media shots.
Along with elephant-riding venues, they provide bite-sized encounters with captive wildlife – albeit at a price. Tiger Kingdom charges 900 baht (HK$220) per person to pose with a small tiger, plus 500 baht should you need an in-house photographer to take pictures, and offers encounters with newborn tigers for 2,500 baht and with a “giant tiger” for 2,000 baht.
The attractions appear hugely popular with tourists from across the globe, although TripAdvisor posts suggest it is an experience some regret immediately afterwards.
“[It] is a tiger jail […] Tigers looked like [they] were drugged,” one Italian tourist wrote after visiting Tiger Kingdom last month. “Never, ever in my life again.”
