Is this the right kind of message you should be sending to your kingdom? That large wild felines should be kept in captivity as pets? We ask ourselves these questions all the time, now an almost unbelievable Instagram video of a Dubai prince surfaces.
In it Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai is playing with what appears to be his pet white tiger cub.
The video clip below shows the prince “nuzzling” the baby tiger cub who looks to be returning his owner’s affection. The prince was quoted as saying that he has a “strong spiritual connection” to animals, especially horses. It was posted October 17 and has created a viral following.
Sheikh Hamdan’s father is the current ruler of Dubai.
Where do these pets come from? Ofir Drori from LAGA, an organization in Africa that rescues wild animals from poachers says most of them are smuggled into the Middle East via private jets. While there are laws in some Arab states about owning wild life privately, these laws are apparently not enforced, or relevant if you are the prince.
Drori tells Green Prophet that there are live wild animals found all over the world, and about 3000 big cats living in private houses. “The Middle East does have a big demand for felines and live animals in general,” he says. There you can find trade even with apes. “They laugh at it and feel like a hero – yes, this is it. They keep exotic animals to dazzle their visitors – and for the rich and bored, they might even have a black leopard.”
We see animal abuse stories in the Middle East all the time. We’ve given a lot of attention to endangered big cats being kept as pets in Arabian Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates where wild animal “pets” are still commonplace.
While these animals may seem cute for now, problems arise when these cute little baby cubs get larger. Other stories coming from the Gulf show the down-side of keeping a big cat as a pet. An article that appeared UAE’s The National expressed the dangers of keeping such animals when they become older.
Meyer de Kock, manager of the Al Bustan Zoogical Center in Abu Dhabi, was quoted as saying: “Cheetahs, lions and tigers have very specific needs. They are very cute when they are small but when they grow up they are very dangerous.”
De Kock added that he is very concerned about where these baby cats come from as they are often the result of the mothers being killed in the wild so their cubs can be stolen and sold as pets.
The best solution is to enforce stricter laws dealing with the capture and sale of wild animals like big cats for pets.
Meanwhile, the practice still continues, with some rare lions and tigers fetching as much as $50,000 on the black market.
Here’s a photo of the prince’s sister with a tiger cub from a home movie of her with animals:
Click on the entire video below:
We’d like discourage everyone from owning wild animals as pets – no matter how rich or affluent you might be. Thanks to an anonymous Dubai-based reader for this tip.
More about wild animals as pets and general animal abuse:
Wild Animal “Pets” Still commonplace in the Gulf
Dubai Porsche Owner Walks Pet Cheetah On Leash
Corruption is Alive and Well at Egyptian Zoo
Images via screengrabs of the Prince’s home movie
Author: Maurice Picow
Maurice Picow grew up in Oklahoma City, U.S.A., where he received a B.S. Degree in Business Administration. Following graduation, Maurice embarked on a career as a real estate broker before making the decision to move to Israel. After arriving in Israel, he came involved in the insurance agency business and later in the moving and international relocation fields. Maurice became interested in writing news and commentary articles in the late 1990’s, and now writes feature articles for the The Jerusalem Post as well as being a regular contributor to Green Prophet. He has also written a non-fiction study on Islam, a two volume adventure novel, and is completing a romance novel about a forbidden love affair. Writing topics of particular interest for Green Prophet are those dealing with global warming and climate change, as well as clean technology - particularly electric cars.
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Taking baby wild animals for sale as pets is just one of the problems as these big cats are still sought after by big game trophy hunters (even if hunting them is illegal) and also for medicinal purposes (tiger bones are considered to have medicinal and aphrodisiac benefits in the Far East).
Large predators have always had a definite place in nature; and their demise causes other animals to overpopulate and die from starvation. There is a natural order of species; and killing off predators like big cats, disturbs this order tremendously.
Tambalionguy seems to miss the fact that one of the reasons these animals are, as he says, endangered in the wild is because rich people are having them poached for pets. After they get bored with them, or the animal becomes too big and dangerous, they are then disposed of. If this is your plan for the preservation of species, god help them. The truly sad thing about this story is that the future ruler of Dubai has given his tacit support to the trade in exotic species, which anyone who knows anything knows is a cruel, tragic, and usually criminal industry. If you, Tambalionguy, or anyone else, believes this is treating animals ‘with lots of love and care’ you are strangely deluded.
I want to high five you, Richard.
This story and these comments are just so upsetting, Karin, why do people care so little for preserving what is wild and beautiful? I just don’t get it.
There used to be lions roaming the hills of the Holy Land. The last one was killed in the wild about a century ago. Leopards and cheetahs also roamed this area as well. The last wild leopard may have been killed recently near the Dead Sea . This is an example of how wild species like big cats are fast disappearing in their native habitats. This includes Africa, of course.
My regards to the Prince! He is leading as an example for people to responsibly own more of these animals. These species are in grave danger in the wild, but relatively safe in good quality captive situations. I am glad to see that other people besides myself see through this flawed belief that ‘wild animals only belong in the wild’. Big cats are highly adaptable. And raised with lots of love and care, they very much enjoy living with their ‘people’. If more people could experience what big cats are really like– even as adults– there would be little place for this anti-animal diatribe to gain traction.
Seems to me that this white lion would probably enjoy living in the wild in the trees and not on a sofa in the arid and hot desert eating chocolate bars and chips.
The princess actually posted all those photos of herself in an album she displayed on Youtube. No intentions from our part to discredit anyone. We would be happy to interview the royal family about their pets if they are interested.
Thanks Johnny for a well-thought out and utterly flawed argument.
Seriously?! We shouldn’t fight to protect wildlife and wild places because they’re better off living with mankind?
Who are you to judge when/how an animal is happy? What concept of happiness do you think a tiger has? So there’s one tiger cub who looks reasonably content? Therefore it’s ok to promote a poaching industry that causes diabolical suffering and rapes the remaining wild places of their inhabitants?
And it’s all the fault of the west? Let’s face it, your ridiculous sermon is actually about defending the Dubai royal family isn’t it? If you want to know how the exotic pets of Dubai end up once they get too big to cuddle, take a trip along to Jumeirah ‘zoo’ and see if you think the animals in there are happy.
When are the wildlife destroying environmentalists going to realize that if any animal is going to have a future it’s time to start focusing on making a place for them in the world of man, for the world of humans IS NATURE.
Humans are animals.
You want to know what a wild animal wants, look in the mirror.
We are animals, and our desires for food, safety, comfort, to reproduce Etc. HAVE NOT CHANGED from the day the first human appeared on the planet.
The problem with having exotic pets is mostly the idealistic fools who adopt the Christianity based notions on the place of “wild animals” in our world.
The rest of the world has never shared it, and the rest of the world is smart for not following the West’s lead.
China and India with over 1/3rd of all the people on the planet still have tigers of their own.
Australia with only a population of ONE middle sized city in either nation lost its tiger (marsupial) almost a century ago.
Australia has more animals on the red list than the rest of the world combined, yet when it comes to preserving the species the Western Environmentalists point accusing fingers at the Middle East, India and China for mishandling their wildlife, and give the Aussies a gold badge for trying so hard despite failing miserably (same goes for the USA with our Buffaloes Pronghorn Etc. )
Those big cats look quite happy, FAR happier than the miserable faces of big cats in the wild whose lives are a constant struggle against the elements, starvation Etc. Living wild is not living free except in regards to dying a miserable death from the endless # of ways “living wild” can result in, like being filled with parasites from the prey you eat.
I just hope that in this case, the Mid East just tells the real destroyers of wildlife in the World to shut the hell up, and keep on working on creating a safe place for the big cats in the our world, the world of man the natural world.
Without that, they will not survive no matter how much Westerners want to believe in their bankrupt schemes to save “wild spaces” where there are none for “wild animals” who’d rather live in close association with us than in the horrible “wild spaces” they are sent to live before the Western efforts drive them into extinction.
If there is any scandal to be found in this article for the people there I imagine it would be that private pictures of the Princess in her own home being shown on a public website while being dressed so immodestly. No doubt this was intentional as a way to discredit the family.