Marshall Brain's Blog

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Tiger Facts

In the wake of three tiger attacks this month, Time magazine ran an article on tigers that contains these revealing factoids:

• There are only approximately 5,000 tigers left in the wild.
• There are 10,000 tigers in private hands in the U.S., many of them kept as pets.
• Tigers reproduce easily, and there are people producing tiger cubs in the same way breeders produce pure bred puppies.
• Therefore, tiger cubs can be purchased in the U.S. for as little as $300.
• In more that half the states of the U.S., it is legal to own a tiger as a pet.

Tigers grow to be 9 or 10 feet long and weigh something like 500 pounds. If there are 10,000 tigers in the U.S., that's 350 per state average in the states that allow them. Most states have something like 100 counties. So chances are, if you live in one of the 29 states that permit tiger ownership, there are three or four tigers being kept as pets in your county right now.