GW Exotic Animal Park (Closed) GW Animal Park Discussion

The park has taken in two tigers and four bears from a private owner who is no longer able to provide adequate care.
GW Zoo Takes In Tigers, Bears From Overwhelmed Owners - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

 

A disturbing article about the place. It reads like an episode of the Maury Povich Show.

The Tiger King Untamed | This Land Press

 

Thanks for posting! An incredibly long yet fascinating article about a roadside "zoo" that seems to have a tremendous number of big cats in poor enclosures.

 

"Joe Exotic" looks from his picture like he couldn't decide if he wanted to look like Siegfried or Roy so he went for a mash-up of both.

 

This just in...
http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/...sidential-run-353030861.html?device=phone&c=y

Can it get any worse?

 

The Press Release

Press Conference

Time: 1pm

Date: Monday November 23rd

Location: Hyatt Regency Hotel First Floor, 350 N High St, Columbus, OH 43215


Purpose: To announce that paperwork has been mailed certified to enter into the race of President, to address the Ohio people about their tax money being used in a monopoly pushed through by Governor Kasich, Senator Balderson. To support the people of Ohio that is being raided with swat teams for this monopoly, and to release my press Statement to the people of Ohio and of America. It is time the people who built this country with blood, sweat and tears has a voice. This voice starts tomorrow.
Hope to see you there.

Joe Exotic.
For The People of America.

 

I wonder how many people every four years actually file this paperwork to be a (presumably) write-in candidate? It would be interesting to know. Last election I actually looked up several third party and write in candidates because I did not like either of the two main contenders. The write-in candidates were (just like the one in this thread) eccentric, to say the least. I ended up not voting for president at all and moving on to the other ballot issues.

 

Zoo owner "Joe Exotic" has to contend with a tragedy as his husband accidentally shot himself and has died:

Husband Of Animal Park Operator Joe Exotic Dies In Shooting

 

I'm sure I've vaguely heard of this place before, but wowwww. I went to their website after coming across a groupon for the place (where it has 4.5 stars out of over 2,000 reviews, proving you should never trust reviewers). You can pay just $50 to play with big cat cubs, which they always seem to have an abundance of. For $5,000 you can buy a cub for yourself. They currently have 250+ big cats (tigers, lions, and their mixes). There's some real gems on the awful website:

From the rescues and sanctuary lies pages:

• Most sanctuaries don't really rescue animals, they are just re-homes. "Rescues are an animal that is beat, abuses, starved or neglected and has just a matter of days before it dies and needs rescued. Or an animal that finds itself in a situation that is detrimental to the life of the animal like being stuck in a pond, hit by a car or trapped somewhere."

• "Sanctuaries are NOTHING but a private owner with a non-profit tax status that likes the kind of animal they so call rescue. Most of the Sanctuaries we have seen are hoarders with a God complex that think they are the only ones that should have these animals and not you." (This is different from Joe how?)

• Two paragraphs later... "If you do your homework and really study this place they don’t like these animals personally because they don’t allow any affection or love given to these animals. In fact if you do your homework you will see that they are for the extinction of Tigers." (So they rescue that animal species because they like it, but then they don't like it?)

• "Look at the AZA zoos, out of all of their tigers in all of the AZA zoos all of them are related except .031% which means they are all inbred and the private sector is the only way to introduce new blood to the gene pool."

Here's the entirety of the hybrids page, because just this whole thing, bolding and comments in parentheses mine:

"The world of online marketing and social media is one of the most popular places for people to be mis-informed about anything. People can put things online who know nothing about anything but they become keyboard experts in many fields. Especially when it comes to white tigers and hybreeding big cats. Millions of dollars are raised online convincing you that white tigers are inbred to be white and hybreeding of big cats shortens their life and creates deformities.

Here is the truth: Joe Exotic works with some of the world’s top scientist to learn the truth about the genetics of where big cats came from, how they evolved over millions of years and how the species will survive if at all with our climate change. Joe Exotic is the only person on this planet who has successfully hybred 4 species of big cats. (that's not how species work...)

Let’s start with white tigers: White tigers come from a genetic mutation called a hetrosigus tiger which is an orange Bengal tiger that carries the white gene to produce the white coat. There is no such thing as a white Siberian Tiger. This gene is only found in Bengal Tigers. Two hetrosigus tigers mate and produce orange or white cubs depending on which one has the strongest gene or maybe even both the male or female. So what this means is NO HUMAN can predict the color out come just by breeding white tigers together. You can breed two white tigers together and NEVER get a white baby so their (the people scamming you for money telling you lies) about white tigers that must be inbred to have white babies is wrong. They are posting this stuff online just to get your money to stop something that is not happening.

DNA from 19 zoos and Sanctuaries donated to these same gentistist and guess what. Not one Tiger was related. Here is the research paper they published which we would like to warn you the biggest scammer out there is Big Cat Rescue of Tampa Florida and none of her white tigers were related to anyone elses. So why keep lying abou them? MONEY....

Link: Oaktrust Library (There's no actual link. Maybe because the paper, written by an undergrad and not a "gentistist", doesn't say that, just that they aren't significantly inbred? It also only used 6 white tigers - 6 orange tigers, 5 white tigers, 2 golden tabby tigers, 1 snow white tiger and 2 leopards, one of which they weren't even able to sequence because the sample was so poor. http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bi...CARNEY-THESIS-2013.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y )

Now let’s talk about hybrids: Hybreeding is something that happens in the wild. This is how new species are found and discovered. Do you think Noah had all of these on one Ark?
Hybreeding of big cats has proven many things for us to learn from.

1. They are all the same and derived from one cat millions of years ago or they could not breed and produce off spring making a hybrid cat
2. It proves and has proven that hybrid cats are genetically stronger, healthier than purebred big cats. Just like a mutt dog gets sick and withstands illnesses and sicknesses much better than a purebred dog does (that's 100% false about dogs)
   
3. Hybrid cats will be the only ones to survive climate change in todays world. As our climate changes and loss of habitat due to destruction hybrid cats are the only ones that will be able to adapt to these changes."

It seems that the husband, who was "really good with guns", held one to his head and pulled the trigger. "He knew there was a bullet in the chamber, but Travis Maldonado said it would not fire without the magazine." Bunch of geniuses at this place. I found an article where Joe is quoted as saying "One careless mistake snuffed him out from the rest of us," because that's a great way to phrase it, right? Worth noting that Travis was 31 years younger than Joe.

Edit: Meant to include this link. He apparently tosses out his own brand of condoms during his daily talks. Zoo owner accused of tossing condoms to crowd with children

 

What even are the real statistics of related tigers in AZA zoos?

 

I don't know that there's good statistics available (at least publicly) anywhere, but I did find this, which goes into detail about the mutation and that it likely only happened once: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982213004958

The only other thing I found with some mention of statistics was a paper linked on Big Cat Rescue and it had no facility affiliation, most of the sources mentioned were message board and wikipedia, and it started by saying "There are two species of tiger; Siberian and Bengal".
The wikipedia page for captive white tigers is one of the better wiki pages out there, and goes into great detail about the three lineages of white tigers in captivity. All came from closely inbred pairs - father/daughter, brother/sister, etc. Captive white tigers - Wikipedia

 

Just so everyone's on the same page, this is absolutely false, if for no other reason than the fact that the AZA breeds three purebred subspecies of tiger and none of those populations are or can be related. Of course, it's also largely false within the populations as well (for those needing a specific example, there are Siberians living in the AZA that are direct imports from Europe and Russia, and thus are not related to any other tigers in the AZA except their own offspring).

This passage is an affront to gentistists everywhere.

I am greatly concerned for anyone who is using this man's self-branded condoms.

 

So many misspellings...I just can’t. What the heck is a gentistist anyway? Lol. That website sounds like a bunch of BS they try to convince people of to justify in-breeding and ‘hy-breeding’ (another self made up word? Lol)

 

I think my favorite part is him starting by talking about keyboard experts, and then going on to be exactly that, with more BS than a middle schooler who did their paper in homeroom after not reading anything.

I looked it up, because I was thinking it was made up too, but apparently it's in the bible? That's the main reference I could find with it, sermons that included stuff about not hybreeding people (I didn't click on links, but I assume they're talking about race mixing).

Right?!? Who the hell even thinks that's a good idea? And then when confronted by upset parents/grandparents and the media, blows it off because they've been doing it for years?! Of all the things he could give out for free, condoms?!

 

My assumption was that it was an atrociously spelled version of "geneticist".

I mean, I'm supportive of free condoms. But not in this context, and not personally branded by a highly eccentric zoo director.

 

Hybreeding, not gentistist.

Exactly, and not when a large amount of the crowd is going to be made up of young kids.

 

Here's a 4 year old article about him: The Tiger King Untamed | This Land Press - Made by You and Me
Some key points:

About his animals:

• He lets dachshunds live in cages with lions
• He keeps an adult baboon in his house
• His animals seem to frequently attack and injure one another
• "And what ligers done was proved that, genetically, a tiger and a lion are the same animal or they could not reproduce. So we got healthy ligers, and then we did so many DNA and genetic tests and all of our white tigers and proved none of them are related, so they’re not inbred to be white."
• I'm not a fan of peta and hsus, but there's some detailed stuff and videos from their undercover investigations, along with undercover videos out there.

About him:

• He tried changing his business name to Big Cat Rescue Entertainment and got sued by the actual Big Cat Rescue. He had to pay them nearly $1 million. He claimed bankruptcy after $280,000 and transferred the land deed to his mom, then incorporated a slightly differently named zoo under three employees. They're still under his USDA license, though.
• "In my opinion, if you’re not licensed by the USDA and you’re not open to the public, you are an animal hoarder"
• Describing the gift shop: "There was an entire wall of brightly colored and patterned men’s thong and brief underwear, some shimmery, all bearing the label “Tiger King.” Beside them, more Tiger King products: soaps, lotions, and premium condoms. Next to those were CDs with Joe Exotic’s name and picture on them, country music he recorded and burned himself. A couple of televisions inside the shop played his music videos on a loop."
• Travis wasn't his only husband at the time, apparently. He was/is? married to a guy named John Finlay.
  (Follow up: Oh my god, there's a 23 minute video of their 3 person wedding. It includes them opening their gifts and dressing up monkeys as entertainment. )
  (Follow up to the follow up: He married another guy a couple months after Travis died, so he has 2 husbands again. This one is 22. Joe Exotic is getting married on Monday…)
• He has tattoos of bullet holes on his torso.
• He thinks Terry Thompson's suicide (Zanesville, OH) is just a cover-up and he was really murdered
• He ran for President in the past and is the current libertarian candidate for Governor of Oklahoma.

How the hell does this guy have so many fans, much less in rural Oklahoma

 

Does any zoo actually like PETA nowadays though?

Also I highly suggest for anyone who hasn't that you watch his campaign video for president, as it's immensely entertaining.

But in all seriousness, many animals have died and been abused because of him and the fact that USDA hasn't successfully shut him down yet is deplorable.

 

Pity he can't spell, doesn't do his case any good, relying as it does on half truths and (I tried to use emojis here, of a bovine animal and what comes out of its rear end, but it looks as though you can't do that!).