eighthdoctor:

fozmeadows:

russdom:

masha-russia:

(first tiger jumps in) *laughing* Vanya, what is this? Van’ … Van’, get out of the boot, Van’. (second tiger approaches) Mishka … let’s go. Mish, let’s go. Mishka! Mish, let’s go. Come on, sit. Sit. (third tiger comes in) Bonya, you too are here! Ok let’s go guys. Let’s go! *starts singing* x

Just Russian Things

Big cat stuff can often be sketchy even if the content looks cute, so I clicked on the source for the video and this guy apparently runs a sanctuary for rescue tigers and other big cats near Moscow. His YouTube bio is in Russian, but here’s what it says according to Google Translate:

So you can feel happy knowing that these big dumb cats are loved and being looked after.

Yeah, you’re gonna need to do a little more research than that.

Mikhail Zaretsky is (or was, I can’t find a more recent english language source) the tiger trainer for the Nikulin Circus (source). He currently posts videos on youtube about taking his tigers to boarding schools for kids to pet and climb on (source), and how his tigers and lions live together happily (source). Over on instagram, he likes to post videos of himself handling leashed tigers (source) and sometimes riding them (source). (He also tags all of his instagram posts with #bengaltiger, but that’s confusing rather than problematic.)

I’ve been over this before: There is no way to safely, healthily keep an adult tiger full contact in a human residence. You either declaw, defang, or drug the tiger (which he’s been accused of doing), or the human is going to end up dead.

And if he is planning a reserve, he should know better than to transport tigers in an SUV. Or to keep them on leash. Or to let them interact with schoolkids. Or to let them paw at his face. Or to cohabilitate different species. Or to overfeed his tigers–when I first saw this video, I thought they were from the fur trade, that’s how fat they are.

So yeah, keeping big cats in close contact with humans is still a really bad idea.

Edit: This site (source) repeats that he’s running a sanctuary, but I can’t tell if they have a second source outside of his social media, and they bring up that literally no one has vetted this. Big cat “sanctuaries” are notoriously sketchy and prone to existing just because the owner wants to keep big cat pets. Which seems to be what’s happening here.