Tiger King: What Happened To Joe Exotic’s Tigers
What happened to the tigers, lion, and other big cats shown in Netflix’s Tiger King after their owner, the infamous Joe Exotic, went to jail?
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What happened to the tigers of Netflix’s Tiger King after their owner, the infamous Joe Exotic, went to jail? As the title would suggest, there are a lot of tigers in Tiger King: Murder, Madness and Mayhem, the latest true-crime documentary series courtesy of Netflix. Joe Exotic, the unique big-cat lover at the heart of the seven-part documentary, claims at one point to have been the most prolific breeder of tigers in the United States, a county where more of the animals live in enclosures (both in zoos and regular family homes) than they do in their own natural habitats.
The Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, was Joe’s domain and the place that helped him build his reputation as one of the major figures in America’s exotic animal breeding and selling market. Over the 16 acres the zoo occupied, Joe owned over 200 big cats and over 50 species of other animals. As well as tigers, his personal favorite, Joe owned lions, pumas, and rare but deeply controversial hybrid breeds such as ligers, tigons, and a tiliger (a second-generation hybrid from a male tiger and a female liger), the first of its kind.
The big cats, coupled with Joe’s own flamboyance, helped to reel in the crowds to the Greater Wynnewood Park, but it also attracted years of attention from animal rights advocates such as PETA and Carole Baskin of Florida’s Big Cat Rescue, the woman who Joe deemed to be his mortal enemy. Baskin and Joe feuded for years, which resulted in a number of lawsuits, some very strange YouTube video threats, and ultimately, Joe being convicted of murder-for-hire after he tried to pay someone to kill Baskin. Joe is now serving a 22-year sentence in federal prison, having been found guilty of numerous charges. As Joe Exotic becomes an online sensation and fascination with this deeply odd story flourishes thanks to the success of Tiger King, many questions have arisen over the ultimate fate of Joe’s animals and the zoo he molded into his domain.
What Happened to Joe Exotic’s Tigers?
It’s not hard to see why some people would be deeply worried about the fate of Joe’s beloved big cats. On top of the murder-for-hire conviction, Joe was also found guilty of animal abuse after he shot five tigers with a shotgun through their skulls and buried them on his property. Joe contended that the animals were aging or in sick health and that euthanasia by gunshot, which was at the time legal in the state of Oklahoma, was the best option for his animals. A former employee said that Joe had only killed them to make space for incoming animals and that the tigers he killed were perfectly healthy. A profile by Texas Monthly notes that “somewhere in the back pasture, there were more than fifty dead tigers.”
As of April 2020, the G.W. Park is under the ownership of Jeff Lowe, the divisive figure shown in Tiger King as Joe’s former business partner and the man he accuses of setting him up on the murder-for-hire charges, something that Lowe denies. Lowe partnered with Tim Stark, owner of non-profit organization Wildlife in Need, to keep the zoo open. Stark faces his own laundry list of legal troubles, with Indiana Attorney General filing a lawsuit against him and his organization earlier this year, alleging animal abuse and misappropriation of assets.
The zoo is still open and preparing to move to a new location closer to the Texan border. Visitors can still go and see Joe’s collection of tigers, and the controversial practice of tiger cub playtime, one aspect of the park that Carole Baskin took particular umbrage with, continues. Images of the lions, tigers, and hybrid breeds can be found on their website and Lowe’s social media, where he continues to pose for pictures with these wild animals in a deeply exhibitionist manner. The new location for the park, which will be named the Oklahoma Zoo, is set to open this Spring, but that seems unlikely given the COVID-19 pandemic. Lowe insists that the zoo and its animals are now in a better and happier place under his tenure than that of Joe Exotic. Eric Goode, the co-director of Tiger King, disagrees, having told Entertainment Weekly that the zoo is “basically operating on fumes” because of the lack of money. Goode lamented that he had no solid idea of what would happen to the animals but that he suspected “a lot of them will die from starvation, and probably be put down.”
It would be a tragic but depressingly unsurprising fate for these animals. As Tiger King notes, there are many questions surrounding the exact number of captive tigers in America, how many of them are bought and sold on the black market, and what happens when they get too big or expensive to look after. Joe Exotic himself alleged that another big cat breeder, Doc Antle, was notorious for killing tiger cubs one they stopped being small and cute enough to profit from — a claim Doc Antle denies. Whatever the case, it seems dishearteningly likely that the future for the majestic cats seen in Tiger King is not a bright one.
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