The Man With 200 Big Cats (Wildlife Documentary HD) | Predator Pets

Humans have had a close relationship with animals for thousands of years. Scientists agree the domestic dog has been a trusted pet for around 15,000 years and cats became part of the household from 10,000 years ago and now it's estimated there are at least 600 million pet cats in the world. Exotic pets have also been kept for thousands of years. It's well documented that the Egyptians kept baboons as pets and exotic animals kept in the home feature in many ancient texts. In modern times the keeping of exotic pets has increased. A staggering statistic is that there are more tigers in the U.S. alone than there are in the wild. Animal owners truly believe they are playing a role in preserving the numbers of exotic animals but on the other side of the debate there are those who believe it is a cruel practice to keep any animals in captivity. This series explores the issues from both sides from those who know the dangers but see the benefits to others who condemn the keeping of exotic pets. Their stories follow. Mark Kohlhorst knows his animals. Owner of the traveling zoo Mark's Ark and with over 40 species living on his property he really is a modern day Noah. From horses to ducks, rabbits to frogs, Mark is an expert on all things cute and cuddly. But Mark also has a curiosity for the dangerous side of animal handling. His pride and joy are some of the world's most hostile predators. I'm going to be getting out Ivy. Ivy is the larger of my two alligators. Really quite honestly not knowing what her type of temperament is and she's quite different than any others that I've ever had. She is not friendly. This is not a normal pet. You guys might want to stand back because she's going to get an avalanche of water and the way she's presenting right here she can take a hold of this and bust it easily. I go through a lot of these. You might ask why I do this and when she is taped she calms right down. She kind of knows this is a job. What I'm trying to do is get her tail so that I have control. That's really good. And then I can get her from behind. This is actually easier than it usually goes with her. So once I control her tail and I've got the back of her head then I can just press her firmly but not harming her down and then her bite power is very powerful on the way down but not up. Electrical tape only will tape against itself and not on her so it doesn't pull her skin. She can breathe perfectly fine and once I have her subdued like this she can't bite and she's really of no danger unless she decides she wanted to use her tail. I would feel completely confident in letting a very small child hold her now and a lot of people are worried about the claws. The nails, they're not very sharp actually and they really don't serve a whole lot of purpose. They do dig in the mud. At four years old Ivy's still relatively small but Mark knows the dangers she will pose once she reaches adulthood. It is likely she will grow to nine feet long and weigh up to 250 pounds. Once she reaches five feet she will be classified as a class three wild animal and Mark will need to obtain a permit to keep her. Alligators are probably in my opinion one of the smarter reptiles. They definitely have anger. She has almost got my fingers. She has got me across the back with her tail. Even for this size it would feel like somebody taking a very broad belt across your back and just drive it right back. Exclusively found across America's southeast alligators are some of the most menacing predators in the United States. Growing up to 15 feet and reaching a thousand pounds this is not a creature you want to run into unprepared. I've never had dogs or cats when I was a kid. My parents were very tolerant and I always had exotics. One of my first pets was a spectacled caiman. It was nasty, evil. I really liked it. My dad enjoyed it too. They're fascinating. They're smart, strong. This type of animal's been around longer than dinosaurs. It's a tricky thing to call this a pet. I've known people that have had 12-foot alligators literally in their basement in the large city of Fort Wayne near here with their toddler child that jumps on its back and played with it and pet it. And the animal had free reign of the basement and a pond, a pool. Now that's a bit extreme for me. That won't ever happen. My child never goes near this animal unless it's in my hands and it's secured. This animal can be dangerous. Encounters between humans and alligators are on the increase in the United States. Worldwide, it's estimated that 1,000 people die every year as a result of crocodilian attacks. I have seen her take raw chicken legs and take that bone and just crunch it in half. I've been bitten by another alligator before and I thought I was going to lose my thumb. It was an alligator that was about a foot longer than this that I had. And I was in a hurry and a rush to go to a show. And even though he didn't have a temperament like this, he didn't like that hurried pace, he got a hold of my thumb. And the next thing I thought was, there goes my thumb. And he pressed down and bit down so hard it felt like, you can't imagine the pressure. It just, I thought my thumb was gone. Alligators' teeth break off easily. And Mark's attack left him with a tooth lodged in his hand. They have the strongest bite pressure relative to size of any crocodilian. And Mark was lucky to escape further harm while at the mercy of this wild creature. A full-size alligator can break the femur of a cow. It's substantial. It's incredibly strong. People buy them as a novelty. These are people that they decide they want to get a pet without ever having experience with any kind of exotic animals. They buy it. It's dangerous. They thought it was a novelty. They thought it was going to be cool. It was going to be really neat. And they learned that, you know, it's not a pet. That being said, I know my animals. I use these animals a lot for 11 years. This is a safe animal that I would never, ever, by any circumstances, ever let anybody get injured. While Mark is highly conscientious of his animals, unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all exotic pet owners. Juan Stewart is the Chief Veterinary Officer and National Director of American Humane, Hollywood. Juan has spent many years working in animal shelters and is a strong advocate for the welfare and protection of both domesticated and wild animals. These reptiles, these birds, these small exotics, they require so much expertise. It would blow your mind. You get a small boa at your pet store and it's all of 18 inches. Well, one day that thing, if you feed it right and take care of it, it's going to be, you know, 8, 10, 15 feet potentially. And then what do you do? I mean, they get discarded and that's not fair for the animal. They can become wild, vicious, dangerous animals. Years spent dealing with these crocodilians means Mark has experienced firsthand the wild nature of these highly powerful animals. Absolutely, this is a predator. You would not believe what this thing is capable of when it eats. I prefer to feed dead food. When there's a situation where I have to feed live, 180 degrees different in their behavior. They are unbelievably fast, unbelievably violent. When you hear them, you know, killing their prey and you hear the bones crunch, there's no doubt about it. You just hear it. And they want to kill it as quick as possible. They're very efficient, very efficient. When dealing with an alligator, as with any wild predator, caution is key. Returning the alligator to its cage can be a particularly difficult task. And Mark approaches it with precision and care. The power is in her hip and her tail. So between my legs here, it's the best way I found to do it. And then I have to hold her very securely because she'll do that. And so she knows she's getting put away and I've got to be very quick and careful with her because sometimes she'll come back at me. She's got a posture right now. That's an aggressive posture. She's checking things out. She's kind of curious and she's okay now. She's calmed down. She's going to probably just go right back up on her platform. She knows everything's done. Like many exotic enthusiasts, one predator is not enough to satisfy Mark's desire for the dangerous and mysterious. This is a Colombian red-tailed boa. She's about seven, eight years old. Her name is Rocky, Rocky Balboa. They can vary a lot in their color. She has bronze. This is one of South America's largest snakes. The green anaconda being the bigger. As an arboreal snake, Colombian red-tailed boas are natively found living in the treetops. They have the fastest strike of any snake and can easily catch monkeys and birds out of trees. She's almost eight feet long. She's strong enough that she could constrict enough to keep my chest from expanding to take in breath. So it's a very, very powerful snake. Even as a trained animal handler, Mark is not immune to the power of these highly dangerous snakes. Caught alone and unaware, he experienced their predatory nature and powerful grasp. I have had incidents before. When I was a zookeeper, I had a much larger one than this that didn't want to go back in its cage. And the snake did not want to let me go. It did not want to go back in the cage. And I struggled with the snake for well over an hour. I could not get to my radio. I was able to get the upper hand on it. I think I just literally had more energy than it did. And I was able to literally take it off like a pair of pants and slide it down. But when I was done, I can't remember but only a few other times where I was so exhausted in my life. These are the strongest animals and their musculature and the way they hold on is different than anything else. I've been bitten by large snakes like this before. And they're so fast that you don't even realize that you're bitten at first because it's so quick that even your nerve endings don't fire right. Honestly, you think, was I just bitten? And then you realize that you've got 60, 70 tooth marks in your arm from a snake like this. And it's a half inch deep. It bleeds for quite a long time before your blood clots. And it does hurt. Imagine having 60 hypodermics all in one short, small area. This is not a domesticated or tame animal. You never know when you're going to have a bad day with that animal. You just have to know the animal. I can kind of tell with my animals when they're not feeling good or anything. She's doing fine. She's having a great time. If she were not, she would be closed up and tight. Perhaps the most widely feared of Mark's collection is his tarantula. While its venom won't kill you, the tarantula's razor sharp fangs and large hairy body make it infamous around the world. I don't know that I'm going to be holding her. She just bit into this. And let me tell you what, it was quite something. She just dug her fangs right in that wood. I've held her before, but boy, she just drove them right in. This is a Chilean rose hair tarantula, a very common tarantula available in pet stores. They typically have a reputation as being a really calm spider. This is a female. Females can live a lot longer than males, up to 30 years. Males are short, seven to nine years. And I've never been bitten by a tarantula. Don't ever want to. She has half inch fangs. The venom, though, is described as being relatively benign. The bite is what hurts. I mean, having half inch fangs, two of them, and spiders are really soft. But what they do when they bite is they grab really powerful and they bite and let go. That powerful grab is tremendous. Probably the snake and the spiders are the most fearful animals that I have that I show. I am not a cat person, a wild cat person, small or large cat. And I'm not a primate person. I am completely against those type of animals. Big cats, primates, they're too smart for their own good. And they're dealing with an animal that matures like a human being, except they're a wild animal. And so when something turns 15 and their testosterone blooms four times greater than a human being in an animal that's only 30 or 40 pounds and you yank the chain around the neck of that animal one too many times and that animal wants to be dominant in a troop, you're in trouble. I worked with primates too long and they definitely are not a pet. This is something you can control. You can take care of. Primates are not something for everybody, for anybody. Now, normally I would handle spiders a lot easier, more comfortable than this, but she's, like I said, I'm a little more unfamiliar with her. This is not something I've done many times with her. These aren't for everybody. No, no, definitely not. I can go in the cage with all the animals out here. The question is, can I come back out of the cage? When driving through rural Indiana, there are many sounds you would expect to hear. What may surprise you is the roar of a mighty tiger. Opened in 1991 by Indiana local Joe Taft, the Exotic Feline Rescue Center is a refuge for the abandoned and the abused. Home to over 200 exotic cats across nine different species. Joe's long held interest in exotic cats began in his youth. I started with cats in the mid 60s. I bought an ocelot as a pet for absolutely no good reason. After the ocelot, I had a leopard that I lived with for 19 years and I lived with her. I mean, she was a pet. She had a big outside enclosure, but she had three rooms in the house and she had the run of my house. Most of the time she slept in my bed at night, her whole life. And during the winter, she was under the cupboards with her head out in the pillow. During the summer, she was over on the couch. Joe's attitude towards pet ownership changed after witnessing the mistreatment many of these creatures face in captivity. What we do here puts us in contact with the 98% of the people who have these animals who shouldn't. And very seldom are we in contact with those 2% or maybe even 1% of people who have them that do a good job. In the United States, laws concerning exotic pet ownership are handled at a state level. Indiana laws are considered relatively lenient compared to other states, requiring little more than a permit for exotic pet ownership. Despite this, many owners don't bother with a permit, instead purchasing animals illegally from breeders online. You could find these animals on the internet and you could get them for $500 or $1,000. And there wasn't much regulation about their interstate movement. Now there are new federal laws in effect that clamp down on the interstate movement of big cats in the pet market. Unfortunately, a USDA permit is easy to come by. And if you have a USDA permit, then you can move the cats back and forth across state lines. On the other hand, there cannot be any money involved in those movements. And frankly, you know that most of the exchanges involving these animals, there is money involved. All of the cats at the center are rescues, arriving from zoos, circuses, breeders, and pet owners around the country. Joe has made it his mission to rescue ill-treated felines and educate the public about these beautiful and mysterious animals. A lot of these cats come here poorly nourished. You get an animal like this in a little cage and upset, and he snaps at something, they'll break their teeth off. So cats would come to us with big grooves cut in their teeth right at the base. And then it wouldn't take a lot of impact with something just to snap those teeth off. Although I've certainly seen upset tigers hit steel bars and teeth just break. Many of Joe's rescues arrive in cages not suitable for their size. With over 25 years on the job, Joe has seen firsthand how mistreatment can have long-term physical and psychological effects on these majestic creatures. These were circus lions. When the guy that owned these retired from the circus, he wheeled nine big cats into his barn and circus wheel cages, and that's where they spent the next 10 years. Six years into that, he bought another tiger and put her in a five by seven cage, she lived in that for four years in that barn. Finally, the USDA decided that it was time to quit patting this guy on the head. And they called me one morning and said, we have 10 big cats up here, we want you to take eight of them and create the other two for another facility. We did it the next day in a blizzard, two and a half feet of snow. These guys could barely walk when they got here. They were here for a month before they first tried to run, and then they just fell over. The guy that had these lions certainly didn't give a damn about them, but they're doing much better now. It's no fault of Joe's that some of his animals arrived displaying the physical scars of previous neglect. Zozo, she walks in a circle because for four years, she was in a cage that was five foot by seven foot, and she didn't have the ability to walk anywhere else. Years of mistreatment can also have significant behavioral effects on the predator, with many of the felines arriving depressed, anxious, and overly aggressive. I don't do things that would make me afraid. You know, after working with big cats for over 50 years, I know the things that people do that are scary, and one of my serious goals is to be able to do this again tomorrow. So you can't do that if they hurt you. Huh, come here. Hi. I mean, she's as sweet as can be, but she is full of energy, and she would certainly break me. Even with the protection of a fence, Joe knows never to let your guard down around these vicious predators, especially when they are hungry. The oldest tiger that's ever been here was 26 when she died, and sometimes we blame that on what she ate before she came here, which was a 17-year-old girl. Court documents described the tigers as, quote, extraordinarily hungry, unquote. We didn't get them for two years after the incident, and they were still extraordinarily hungry. They were all part of a traveling animal show, and the guy had jury-rigged some cages in a barn so he could go out and party for the winter, and left them in the care of a young girl who did not have a reliable source of food, and they hadn't been fed at all for four days, and she went in the barn and took her teenage friend in with her. But the court transcripts say that the keeper girl, who didn't have the experience to be a keeper to begin with, went up to the cage where these hungry tigers were with a hose to give them water, turned her back to talk to her friend, and you saw what happened when I turned my back on, only these guys were hungry. The tigers reached out and grabbed her and pulled her back to the fence, and her teenage friend ran up to try and save her, and they grabbed her friend's arm and pulled it off and ran off and ate it, and the girl died on the floor. Sadly, this shocking attack is not an isolated incident. Since 1990, more than 300 dangerous events involving big cats have occurred, resulting in the deaths of four children and 16 adults. The staff at the rescue center are highly trained and well aware of the risks associated with working with such a powerful animal. Regardless of the situation, these are dangerous predators. I wouldn't want to go in there and let her sit in my lap. She would definitely take your fingers off as a food source. You can see she's not interested in that much anymore. Where did you get that big belly? You're not a skinny little girl anymore, are you? No. Since opening the rescue center, Joe and his team have saved countless big cats from all around the country and have had their fair share of close calls. Bruises, scratches, and broken bones are all part of the job when working with some of the world's most formidable predators. However, these big cats are not Joe's only threat. His work also receives public backlash. This tiger is one of four tigers that we took out of downtown Gary, Indiana. This was a federal seizure and the USDA called us the day before we were supposed to take these cats and said we're afraid to be in this neighborhood in the afternoon. Why don't you come up and spend the night in a neighboring town and we'll go in first thing in the morning and take them. Well, the state police showed up at eight o'clock in the morning and they put yellow crime scene tape around the place. We got there 10 minutes later and there were probably 100 people on the street ready to throw beer bottles at us. So it was an interesting morning. He had three of them in the back room of his tattoo parlor and this one was out in the parking lot behind the tattoo parlor. Look at his claws now. See those claws? Children, these guys came here when they were six months old. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked us to go to New York and take a leopard, which we did. And as we took the leopard, they told the guy we're not going to prosecute on this. Don't do it again. He must have been on the phone buying these leopards before we got all the way out of his driveway. And six months later, after his wife escaped from being chained and beaten in the basement stairs, she went to the police and the police came back and found two leopards and four kids. So we went out and got these two leopards. But for Joe and his team, the risks are worth it. To see these magnificent, powerful creatures given a second chance at life. This tiger came from Branson, Missouri, where he was in a magic theater where they cleaned his cage every day with bleach. Didn't particularly bother to rinse the bleach off. In many cases, the effects of long-term neglect continue to manifest themselves even years later. He had bleach burns on all of his feet. He could barely stand up. See how he still holds that one foot up. Sebastian the tiger also arrived in a poor condition. A detached retina meant he was in constant pain and in need of an urgent operation. He is just one of 25 of Joe's rescued tigers that have required surgery on their eyes. While Joe dedicates his time and money to providing medical attention to those animals who need it, fortunately, not all of them arrive badly neglected. One of Joe's charges still has a special place in the heart of one Ohio State trooper and his wife. She came from an Ohio State trooper who had encountered her as a sick and injured cub. And then he took her home and he and his wife nursed this animal back to health and kept her for nine years. Ohio was one of the states that had no regulations about the keeping of wild animals. And then Ohio passed some incredibly knee-jerk regulations. And as a result of those regulations, this state patrolman was forced to give this animal up. On October 18, 2011, Ohio resident Terry Thompson let loose his vast collection of exotic animals in the streets of Zanesville. 56 animals, including black bears, mountain lions, Bengal tigers, wolves, and leopards roamed the streets, terrifying residents. Shortly after, state legislation was changed, making the private ownership of wild animals and restricted snakes increasingly difficult. Even before I came into the legislature, there were some issues at hand with wild animals. You know, they got talked about, but then after a couple months, it kind of went away. We wanted to make more than just a motion with this. We wanted to actually implement something and get something moving. And when we looked at this legislation, we wanted to be different than any other state. Everyone said, well, look at the other states and look what they're doing around you. We didn't want to do it that way. We wanted to make this Ohio, and we were going to stand and make it Ohio law. And that's how we wanted to do it. We didn't want to base any of the legislation off what other states were doing. We went over to get the cat. He lived way out in the country. We had a hard time finding him. When we finally found the house, there was a state police car out in front, and I thought, we're too late, there's been trouble. But as it turned out, he was the owner of all the cats that we have here that had been privately owned. This officer and his wife are the only people who come to visit, and they come every few months. Considering the number of cougars in this country, the number of people who are hurt or killed by cougars is minuscule. You have to really trigger one of these animals to come after you. Most people that are attacked by cougars don't know there's a cougar there. I mean, if you're jogging down a mountain trail or mountain biking, you can go by one and trigger all of their chase instincts, and they will chase you. While many of these owners have good intentions, according to Joe, a lack of understanding about how to properly care for the wild animals often results in mistreatment and neglect. You know, there are people who have these animals, people in private hands, who take incredibly good care of them. And I'm not against that. I'm against poor care. I'm against incompetent ownership. Indiana, I think, has some pretty reasonable state regulations. If you can acquire one of these animals legally and you can jump through some hoops, you can get a permit to keep one in Indiana. So, you know, in that regard, we're certainly not in favor of seeing them, you know, for sale in your local pet store. But there are people that take good care of them, and I'm not in favor of seeing them taken away from them either. We're making a difference for one animal at a time. We're not making a political statement. We're not saying that people should or should not have these animals. We're saying that this is an animal who is in trouble. This is an animal that has been mistreated. This is an animal whose life is in danger. And we will step forward and do what we can do to save that animal. You know, we will go wherever they are to get them. We will bring them back here. We will make whatever medical technology is at our disposal available to them. And we will see that they have a safe place to stay for the rest of their life. You will get hurt. Are they going to kill you? No, they're not going to kill you, but they're going to hurt you. They will scratch you up pretty bad. Val Mahler is crazy about bobcats. Since opening the National Bobcat Rescue and Research Center in 2008, her life has been devoted to protecting and studying the often misunderstood predator. I've worked in the animal business my entire life. I've been a wildlife biologist, moved out here to do something completely different, and fell into bobcats because that was what was booming at a time that there was no one else out here. I have not met a more intelligent, compassionate, emotional animal in my entire life. Bobcats, in comparison to their body size, have the largest brain of any of the felines. It doesn't matter if it's wild or if it's one that's been raised in captivity. They all have this deep emotional bond with each other or with their human people. If they're a pet, they develop a deep emotional bond. Val's bobcats have developed this bond and show their affection by rubbing their glands on her and marking their scent. Head-butting and mouth-to-mouth contact are also believed to be the ultimate displays of affection. Normally, the difference in the marking and the affection, she will rub her head up against like this. This is more of affection and then she'll lick my nose a lot and hold it with her teeth. Despite their friendly appearance, Val knows that the best place for these predators is out in the wild. Bobcats really do need to live in the wild. The reality is a bobcat is a wild cat, f-zero, they are wild. And so to put a wild animal, even if it's affectionate, even if it loves you as a cub, to put it into a pet environment is really just, it's just not, I don't know, it's not realistic. They are going to tear your house up. They can't be a house pet. If you are going to keep them as a pet, which we never condone, they need to be kept in large cages. You need to have the funding to be able to feed them every day. They're an obligate carnivore. They have to be fed meat. If you go to the grocery store and buy food, you have to use supplements to supplement that so it gives them the appropriate minerals and vitamins. So understanding what kind of animal they are, what the responsibility is to them as an emotional animal that you cannot just leave, you can't go on a vacation and leave them behind. Val's bobcats remain highly territorial, and their unpredictable and ultimately wild nature make even the calmest of bobcats a dangerous choice of pet. Bobcats can be territorial. They can become food aggressive. When they have food that they want, that they think you might get from them, or when they have your phone or your keys and you want them, they're going to hurt you. They can certainly, they have the ability to hurt. Even our camera crew fell prey to these wild animals' advances. If you're down at the same level with them, or if they're up at eye level on a fence, the first thing they're going to do is jump at you, and they will pat you really quickly with their feet. They just go pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And your face will bleed a lot. So it's a warning. If you cross that line a second time, then that's when they use teeth, and teeth is where that begins to get more dangerous. Bobcats have been known to attack household pets, including rabbits, cats, and dogs. Even animal lover Val, who has around 50 animals living in her house, won't let the cats roam freely. I would absolutely not keep a bobcat running around my house. To me, that would be insane. I have over 70 on the property. I would, I have my choice of every personality and every, you know, the extremes, one end to the other, from the sweetest to the craziest. And there's not one on this property that I would comfortably put into my house. Bobcats are nocturnal and primarily hunt under the cover of night. With a diet consisting of small and medium-sized mammals, this fierce predator will first stalk its prey before striking with razor-sharp precision, cutting the spinal cord of its unsuspecting victim. Val considers that the urbanization of traditional rural areas has in fact provided an almost ideal hunting ground for the bobcat. The planting of domestic shrubs, trees, and lawns has increased rabbit, bird, mice, and squirrel populations, all of which are the perfect bobcat prey. Bobcats are also known to kill prey much bigger than themselves. And while they often hunt by stealth, they can deliver a death blow with a leaping pounce that can cover 10 feet. Their reputation for being vicious and predatory hunters has made bobcat trapping commonplace in the United States. As we know, their environment is dwindling. They're preyed upon, they're killed. So it's not the most friendly place for them outside of the borders or the safe walls of private ownership or animal company ownership. Bobcats are common throughout North America and are found in a range of diverse habitats. They adapt well to many different living conditions and can be found in forests, swamps, and deserts. In the last 10 years, their urban population has also increased significantly. When we talk about an urban bobcat, we're talking about an animal that has adapted to live in the urban environment. There are 12 and questionably 13 subspecies of bobcats. The scientists are still outstanding on it. The smallest of the subspecies are down here south in Texas, along the southern borders, and in Mexico. And as you go north, they get larger. We have been doing science on bobcats here for 20 years. We have learned more about them in the past 20 years, probably than anybody has ever known about them. A lot of interesting things went on, particularly again with the urban bobcats, because they're almost a new species. They're a completely different animal than the rural bobcats. They can't stand it. They smell like other cats. I don't know, I don't know. It's a matriarchal society in the urban environment. The girls are in charge. The boys generally are really submissive to them. When you see two bobcats fighting, it's largely females. Bobcats live a solitary lifestyle, only interacting with others of their kind during breeding season each winter. They are territorial, and run-ins at the wrong time of year are often violent. Even bobcats that have become pets remain stealthy hunters, and premeditate every move they make. Val is taking a risk every time she interacts with these highly intelligent hunters. Yet she wants nothing more than to see the bobcat population thrive and survive. Yes, there are lots of bobcats in America today. There are. In 20 years, I think there's every likelihood that we could lose all of them due to inbreeding and genetic issues and disease, and it could take out both the urban and the rural cats. So I think that our work here is important. Understanding them before this happens, you know, and being ready for it when it does happen is going to be a very important part of what we do.