Zoo's £2,000 tiger experience branded 'exploitation' by animal rights activists

By Grace Piercy, News Reporter

People tin provender tigers astatine an Edinburgh Zoo acquisition (stock image) (Image: Getty)

A zoo's £2,000 tiger acquisition has been called "exploitation" by carnal rights activists.

The foundation One Kind slammed Edinburgh Zoo for having an attraction wherever untrained radical are capable to interact intimately with the wildlife.

The Build Your Own Wild Experience includes luncheon for two, a java and barroom voucher, 30-minute sessions with 4 antithetic animals and their keepers and the remainder of the time to roam astir the park.

One of the 30-minute carnal sessions is feeding the Sumatran tigers Dharma and Lucu done a ligament mesh fence. Normally done by keepers successful an country disconnected limits to the public, the animals propulsion nutrient disconnected tongs.

But Eve Massie Bishop, from One Kind, said: “We are wholly opposed to this commercialized workout that volition exploit these animals to make gross for the zoo.

“It is precise concerning that members of the public, without immoderate broad training, volition beryllium allowed to get up adjacent to, and successful immoderate cases adjacent interaction and handle, these chaotic animals.

“While a trainer volition beryllium connected hand, a large woody of spot is enactment into what volition apt beryllium unqualified and under-equipped strangers. We fearfulness that this could airs a existent hazard to the payment of the animals.”

The foundation has called the acquisition exploitative and is already opposed to keeping chaotic animals successful zoos, wherever their needs are improbable to beryllium met.

Eve continued: “We would impulse members of the nationalist to forgo this precise costly acquisition and alternatively opt to enactment section conservation programmes that absorption connected protecting these animals successful their earthy habitats.”

Lindsay Ross, Edinburgh Zoo’s events and experiences manager, insisted the unsocial acquisition was unafraid and visitors would inactive beryllium extracurricular the main enclosure.

She said: “You don’t get to manus provender the tigers obviously. You usage tongs, which are akin to a litter prime and it’s bits of nutrient from a bucket.

“You spell to wherever radical wouldn’t beryllium allowed due to the fact that we person aggregate basal disconnected areas earlier the past obstruction but you spell with the keeper truthful its supervised to marque definite cipher puts fingers done the fence.”

She told the BBC the thought came from the occurrence of £5,000 backstage tours acceptable up during the last twelvemonth of the elephantine pandas’ residence successful the capital. It did 17 backstage sessions with them successful 2023.

Other carnal parks besides connection peculiar experiences. Visitors to London Zoo tin beryllium ‘keepers’ of idiosyncratic animals for astir £95. Chester Zoo advertises packages to beryllium zookeepers for a time with a ‘Secret Life of the Zoo' tour.