AKA ZooWorld

Zooworld Zoological & Botanical Conservatory in Panama City Beach, FL 6/27/2022 for unsafe handling of animals. USDA Report

It is a shame that Animal Planet promoted a park that appears to use a steady stream of baby tigers for pay to play encounters.  It has been suggested that they get their cubs from Josip Marcan.

 

July 2012 yet another pay to play tiger cub is bred for use as a money making prop at ZooWorld

 

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Loki might have been slightly upstaged at ZooWorld by the unnamed lion cubs, but the 5-week-old snow white Bengal tiger cub doesn’t seem to know that.

 

“He’s a little demanding,” ZooWorld Education Director Stephanie Willard said. “From a little wee thing it was ‘my way.’ He’s not ugly about it, but everything is done how he wants it.”

 

Even his name rings of lighthearted trouble making.

 

“It means warrior of mischief,” Billie Lambert of ZooWorld said.

 

Loki is at Zoo World through early fall, Willard said. He is on loan from the same private entity that loaned the zoo two snow white Bengal tiger cubs last summer, Rajastan and Tahan.

 

When they went to pick up Loki, zoo staff was able to see their former inhabitants and they are doing well, Willard said.

 

“They are huge,” she said.

 

Bengal tigers are endangered and a Loki, as a snow white Bengal, represents a very rare subset of his breed.

 

The species comes in four colors. The most popular is orange with black stripes, followed by white with black stripes, then a golden tabby that is yellow with cinnamon-colored stripes, and the rarest color is a snow white, which is white with barely visible light grey colored stripes.

 

Loki began starring in Animal Encounters on Wednesday and will be available for interaction for the duration of his time at the zoo.

 

Source: http://www.newsherald.com/articles/joins-104359-panama-tiger.html#ixzz23qFyIYDA

 

There were recent reports that Josip Marcan had provided white tiger cubs to the Alabama Gulf Coast zoo.  This video was tagged as Alabama and the time frame was right according to this TripAdvisor review below.  Sounds like they plan on having baby tigers on a regular basis:

This was posted on TripAdvisor on Aug 1, 2011

This was a pleasaint (sic) experience for my daughter, her son (18) and I during our stay in Orange Beach. My daughter Melanie could hardly sleep the night before. Our appointment was at two and we had to wait a while. It was so worth it as those cubs were beautiful! The were getting to the age where the interaction is close to being discontinue due to their agressive nature.

One cub tore the crotch out of my grandson’s jeans and bit his stomach.

My daughter had a couple bites and I avoided getting bit by getting out of their cage. For those not participating in this for a fee of $50.00, you still a real close up view and pictures of the tigers. The female seemed to be drawn to me and thought it might be my fragrance I wore. She was beautiful and I would have loved to have played for her but she wanted to paw on my legs and their claws are already long and dangerous. Their sweet faces are so memorable! …We do plan to return with my younger grandchildren when the tigers are younger.

They get younger batches and the age limit drops when they are young and less agressive.

 

Another visitor said on July 29, 2011

They also had baby white tiger interaction available.

We could see the baby tigers right up close. There were 3 babies and we watched 3 people doing their interaction with them. We were just on on the other side of the fence from them.

This visitor knew something was up in Aug 2010 when they reported:

I actually had a different experience with the zoo than most here. While it was very neat and I did enjoy it, I felt the staff was somewhat rude. When we asked questions about the animals, we were given very vague, short answers.

 

Zoo World visitors
July 30, 2012 09:49:58 AM

It’s a disgrace that ZooWorld is using weeks-old lion cubs as money-making props. By nature, lions shun human contact. These babies should be sharing quiet time bonding with their mother. They need and deserve privacy and nurturing. Forcing them to interact with streams of people is cruel.

Encouraging visitors to “pay to play” is certainly not in the animals’ best interest. This promotion also irrefutably encourages people to run out and buy a lion cub, since they are being presented as cute, cuddly toys. Animal protection organizations and law enforcement agencies already are struggling with the crisis of exotic-cat overpopulation. The zoo should be in the forefront in condemning the private ownership of exotic animals, not encouraging it.

The zoo should immediately stop this exploitative promotion, stop breeding more money-making “inventory,” and never subject the animals in its care to such gratuitous cruelty ever again.

Jennifer O’Connor
PETA Foundation
Norfolk, Va.

Read more: http://www.newsherald.com/articles/visitors-104441-world-zoo.html#ixzz22DOj61pY