Zip Trips: White tiger cubs at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom

All right. Welcome back. Good morning, son, too. We are getting back to our local zip trip this morning. Heading to Vallejo. We have to go to Sal Castaneda and Brian Gallo. They're at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. You're walking away from me, Sal. Oh, you know what? I didn't even know we were on the air. Look at this. Look at these tigers. This is amazing. Wow. You need to bring one home, Sal. This is amazing. Oh, my goodness. So let me bring in Sean Fortney here, who is, you are the trainer, right, Sean? Yeah. I'm one of the animal care specialists that works with the big cats here at the park. These are two eight-month-old white Bengal tiger cubs. So they're eight months is not adult. No, no. They're a long ways from that. They'll do most of their growing during the first two years, but considered fully mature about three and a half to four years of age. Three and a half to four years. Boy, they're beautiful. They are. So these guys, all tigers are highly endangered. So one of the reasons these guys are here is we can educate people about conservation, about endangered animals. People care more about the environment and about these animals. Right. So they don't, this little pen here doesn't look like they live here all the time. You bring them out here to show them, right? Correct. Every day we're open from about 1230 to four o'clock. They're out here. We're out here with them to answer questions, talk to people about them. But they have a full-time area over at Temple of the Tiger where we have our adult tigers. Brian Gallo, do you have any questions for this good animal specialist? Yeah. When do we get to go in? They like to pet back. So yeah, I'm okay with that. I'm layered. I think Sal and I are protected. He can speak for himself. I'm staying out here. Jesus has my back today. Good idea. So they're eight months old. Where did you get them? So these guys were born at a zoo on the East coast and they came out here when they were about two months of age. Okay. Two months of age. Okay. So if they're endangered, there must be limited numbers of these tigers, right? Yeah. So various zoos and parks work together to make sure we can keep a good diversity in their genetics around the country. And in the wild, there's probably only about 4,500 tigers remaining. Wow. That's very little for all of this. Do you have any other questions about these beautiful animals? I mean, I don't know. It's interesting because I think when you think about animals in captivity, you think it's kind of sad, but these two look like they're just ecstatic. Like look how happy they are. So we work very, very hard to make sure that our animals get everything they need to live great lives here. These guys have a great time out here playing around. We definitely would not go in with them if these guys were not happy. So we're making sure that we have great relationships with them. So I can go in. That's what I just heard. Not quite. Man, liability. So if I was one and Sal was one, who would be who? Who's the more laid back one? This guy. I'm the more laid back one. So you'd be like Balder. That's our male. Okay. And yeah, the female. Which one is the female? The lighter colored one's the female. Her name's Nailani. Okay. She is fired up all the time. It's go, go, go with her. Can I just reach through and give him a scratch on the ear? No, sorry. See, see? Brian's always pushing the envelopes. I'm jelting. You have to protect your fingers. Yes. Hey, Sal. So the last question I have for you, Shaund. Yes, go ahead. Well, I wanted to ask because I know a lot of people, they get concerned about animals at parks like that because of the roller coasters and the rides and everything. And you brought up a good point and, um, that they really are spending a lot of time educating and, um, making sure that these animals live on since they're endangered. Right. So there's a lot of care for them. Yeah. So one of our anchors where you can't hear her. So I'll tell you what she said. She, she says that the education component, because, you know, people need to know that they're endangered and, uh, they're being cared for. And this is one of the reasons why they're here. When people come to the theme park, they're riding the roller coaster, but they see this and then maybe they'll become more aware. Is that correct? That is exactly right. Um, we get a lot of people here that aren't even really aware that we have animals here. So they're here for the thrill rides and they come over, they see tigers, lions, dolphins, sea lions. Uh, and we get a chance to educate those people about endangered animals like tigers. Got it though. They're beautiful. Sean Fortney, uh, animal care specialist at Six Flags. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for showing us these beautiful, uh, animals. Of course. Yeah. Thank you guys for coming out. Yeah. There's more, there's more to Six Flags than just, uh, losing your lunch on a, on a roller coaster. That's right. Definitely. Come on out and join us. Uh, people are coming out every day to see these guys grow up. All right. Thank you, Sean. All right. So now we're going to toss it over to Brian. Who's going to tell us about today's weather. Is it going to be nice out here today for people? It already is nice. I mean, come on. The skies are opening up. It's a beautiful morning. You know, my first kiss was here, by the way. Oh, I didn't know. I think I was like nine or 10. It was the whale. Yeah. It was Orca or some sort of, all right, back to work. We go.