For many international tourists a holiday in SA is not complete without experiencing the country's abundant wildlife, and one of the attractions is “lion cub-petting”.
While often well-intentioned and enticing due to the “selfie” culture on social media, lion cub “cuddling” can have negative welfare consequences for the animals.
New research, based for the first time on an analysis of publicly available videos uploaded to YouTube by tourists in SA at cub-petting facilities, indicates that many of the cubs exhibited stress behaviours such as avoidance and aggression.
Researchers from animal welfare organisation Four Paws and New York University analysed the videos to gain insight into animal behaviour, husbandry practices and captive living conditions that are difficult to record.
“Our findings show that cub-petting facilities may cater to people with good intentions for the lions, but there are still grave welfare concerns,” said Dr Becca Franks, co-author and assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University.
“Lions who begin their lives in such facilities become part of a larger cycle of harm, including the canned hunting industry, the exotic pet trade and the black market for wildlife parts. While these activities are well-known, the exploitation of cubs at tourist attractions is less well-understood,” she said.
Published in the special 10th anniversary issue of Animals journal, the study addresses cub-petting tourism and the harm it inflicts on lions. Cub-petting uses young animals, mainly big cats such as lions and tigers, often as photo props for paying customers.
Researchers noted there was growing concern about captive animals in SA, including petting tourism. As part of the study they analysed 267 videos and narrowed this down to 49 interactions. They were taken from at least 11 SA safari parks between 2008 and 2019.
The majority, or 61% of the videos, had cubs less than three months old. Two videos showed cubs as young as nine days old, and a one-day-old cub that still had its eyes closed. The lion mother could only be seen in one of the 49 videos
Most videos (77%) showed cubs engaging in at least one stress behaviour, the most common being avoidance and aggression.
Cubs that were born in captivity can also not be put into the wild, as they would not know how to hunt for themselves. There is no conservation value to captive breeding of big cats.
— Elize Parker, spokesperson for Four Paws
Comparing voluntourism to regular tourism, researchers found no difference in instances of poor husbandry or observable stress behaviours.
Researchers said while many tourists were likely to be unaware of the negative impact of cub-petting, “and may even believe they are helping the cubs, the analysis provides evidence to the contrary”.
“These results show that cub-petting operations are characterised by poor cub welfare, including features that are inherently harmful to cub development, such as separation from the mother at an early age and forced activity outside normal waking hours.”
Elize Parker, spokesperson for Four Paws, said in SA there are more than 300 captive wildlife facilities that breed and keep about 12,000 lions and an unknown number of tigers, cheetahs and leopards.
“Many of these facilities offer cub-petting as a tourist attraction, as well as walks with lions and other hands-on experiences that must be paid for ... such as voluntourism where volunteers pay to work at these establishments.”
She said despite the use of Promotion of Access to Information Act to request the number of big cats at private and government-owned facilities in SA, only three out of the nine provinces had given an indication of how many big cats they had.
“Limpopo recorded keeping the highest number of big cats at facilities for lion breeding and activities such as captive animal tourism, with a total of 62 tigers and 698 lions. Gauteng was the only province that recorded big cats held on government facilities.”
Parker said a survey by Four Paws this year, on awareness and visitation of captive breeding farms, “showed young people are significantly more likely to visit these facilities”.
Apart from stress, another negative effect of cub-petting is that “these animals can never be returned to the wild”.
“Cubs that were born in captivity can also not be put into the wild as they would not know how to hunt for themselves. There is no conservation value to captive breeding of big cats, despite owners of facilities that offer cub-petting claiming this during visits by visitors,” Parker said.
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