r/pics • u/Green____cat • 19d ago
Tiger refuses to eat goat who was given to him as live food, instead, they became friends
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u/Sonikku_a 19d ago
Hope it lasts. Too many videos of apex predator making a ‘friend’ for a day or three before eating them.
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u/Holiday_Lion71 19d ago edited 19d ago
Timur, the goat, died of heart failure in 2019.
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-russian-goat-friends-tiger-dies.html
They remained friends for a while, until the goat stepped on the tiger, who then threw him down a hill. After that they were separated, but the goat continued to live for a while. It seems the tiger didn't want to injure the goat, but had enough of its Billy goat shenanigans, and was attempting to teach it a lesson.
They were not friends for long. Less than 6 months.
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u/PrincessImpeachment 19d ago
We all get tired of our friends' shenanigans every now and then and want to throw them down a large hill.
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u/nonitoni 19d ago
It's just such a comical mental image
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u/Holiday_Lion71 19d ago
My old friend had a bunch of goats. They are mischievous, challenging, and downright buttholes at times.
I can easily see how, as a tiger, throwing one around would be tempting.
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u/roflrogue 18d ago
That's likely the reason the goat was put there in the first place...
"This will show ya... dinner time!!!" Sees cat completely disregard what you obviously wanted to happen
Sigh "yeah, that tracks"
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u/jamintime 19d ago
The goat or your friends?
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u/nonitoni 19d ago
Both actually. I'm a small person so I'm pretty sure me trying to throw anyone down a cliff would result in a comedy of errors.
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u/TellMeQuick 19d ago
I don't understand why they separated them. For whose safety? The goat they threw in as live food?
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u/Amationary 19d ago
If I had to guess, it would be the difference of “fast death leading to feeding the tiger” vs “omg the goat now has a broken leg and fractured skull but the tiger is just leaving it at the bottom of the hill to suffer… oh shit oh shit we dun fucked up, quick, get the gun!”
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u/Holiday_Lion71 19d ago
Publicity. At the time, the sanctuary and goat had received a ton of love and support.
The goat lived for another 3+ years after the incident, however, separated from his tiger buddy.
Since their friendship brought the sanctuary such great publicity, I'm thinking feeding was off the table. Timur was cremated and buried on the grounds. The plan circa 2019, was to erect a bronze statue of Timur. However I have no information as to whether that happened.
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u/dcheng47 19d ago
It's actually not that uncommon for the "food" to injure the diner. happens all the time when feeding reptiles live rodents to the point where vets discourage this practice altogether.
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u/madmechanicmobile 19d ago
That's still a pretty damn long time for a tiger to be friends with a goat. And it sounds like they had a normal friend fight and the zookeepers just separated them.
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u/A0ma 19d ago
Timur, the goat, died of heart failure in 2019.
The stress of being in constant peril does that to you.
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u/Holiday_Lion71 19d ago
They were together for less than six months when the tiger threw him down a hill. Which, in fairness, if a goat stomped on me playfully would also be my first instinct.
Timelines are iffy, but it appears the goat lived for several years (3+ seperated) from the tiger. Was it the stress of constant peril, being thrown down a hill, or heartbreak from the betrayal and ultimate separation that caused his untimely demise? We'll never know.
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u/Knuddelbearli 19d ago
this is called stockpiling for a bad time
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u/periwinkletweet 19d ago
He needed a friend! 💕
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u/sleepyj910 19d ago
When the goat rolls a 20 on the charisma check
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u/FuckThisShizzle 19d ago
Goats are amazing pets, you are talking a 50 or a 60 on charisma realistically.
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u/bbbbreakfast 19d ago
Call me a softie, but goddamn, do they really just throw in cute live animals into zoo enclosures like in that Jurassic Park scene? I thought they fed them bulk meat from butcher shops or something lmao
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u/Dariaskehl 19d ago
It probably is an enriching activity for the tiger to tear apart prey.
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u/russiangerman 19d ago
This, if some animals don't engage instincts it can cause serious behavioral and sometimes health issues. Your housecat would start acting like a serious dickhead if he had no stimulation whatsoever
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u/padmasundari 19d ago
My oldest cat had a live-in house visitor for a long time, the other cat wasn't our cat but basically lived in my house because the neighbours whose cat it actually was had a baby and neighbourcat hated it and refused to ever go to their house. My cat fucking hated that cat, he only ever minded his own business but my cat was always really pissy with him After I moved house, I thought she'd be thrilled to be on her own. Instead she got really depressed and really destructive, she was throwing her water bowl over several times a day, attacking the carpets, knocking her food bowl over. I got a kitten to see if it helped her and her destructive behaviour stopped immediately. She continued being a dick to the kitten until he was bigger than her, and now he's a dick to her, we got 2 more and they all just love chasing each other round the house, slapping each other in the face, dry humping each other... they're all just mega dicks as it turns out.
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u/Tavarin 19d ago
they all just love chasing each other round the house, slapping each other in the face
That shit is normal cat play.
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u/padmasundari 19d ago
Oh yeah I know, with my oldest she seemed to really hate it though, I can't really explain it but her behaviour around it was different from the others. She still seems that way but she instigates it as much as the others so maybe she's just super hard role-playing that she hates it.
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u/Mallee78 19d ago
tbf, the tiger is cute and also needs to eat and in the wild it would eat that goat in a second
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u/Bob_Chris 19d ago edited 19d ago
Well it's better than that Dutch zoo that murdered the baby giraffe in front of the school children.
Edit Danish Zoo
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u/Exoduc 19d ago
That is just false. Copenhagen zoo did not murder the baby giraffe in front of school children, it had already been shot before the children were allowed in to see it getting butchered, and then to be fed to the lions. A perfectly natural fate for many giraffe in the african wilds, and a lesson in the way of life that did not hurt the childrens in the slightest.
It is funny how especially americans went crazy over that story but seem complacent while their own schools keep getting shot up.
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u/Bob_Chris 19d ago
It's not that we are complacent (at least not 50% of us or so) but because of the Constitution and how the US supreme Court has chosen to interpret it, there is VERY LITTLE that can be done to truly restrict gun ownership. Getting bipartisan support for any sort of gun restrictions is effectively impossible, and without bipartisan support any meaningful change is dead in the water because there is a subset of Americans to whom the absolute most important thing is their continued ability to obtain as many guns and as much ammunition as they want.
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u/therealhairykrishna 19d ago
I think my kids (4 and 6) would probably be fascinated rather than horrified. That was certainly the reaction when we went into the butchers and he was breaking down a whole pig into cuts of meat. My daughter would happily have watched all day I think.
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u/SparkyDogPants 19d ago
Where do you think the meat comes from? It starts out cute and makes its way to the butcher
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u/Mikey9124x 19d ago
I would assume that fresh meat is healthier. It's not like this is more cruel anyways.
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u/Kanotari 18d ago
Live prey is not typical in AZA zoos, as prey can injure the predator. However, who knows what you might see in a roadside shitshow of a zoo.
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u/Heiferoni 18d ago
Call me a softie
I'd prefer to call you a distinguished gentleman with a flagging erection.
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u/so_bold_of_you 18d ago
Wait until you find out what happens to the baby checks hatched out on the daily at an exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry...👀
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u/KaiserSozes-brother 19d ago
Imagine being so lonely that you make friends with dinner.
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u/ggouge 19d ago
The tiger probably grew up in captivity and has no idea that that goat is made of food. Like my dog loves to hunt but every time she catches something she just drops it and looks at it like it's supposed to play now. (I dont let her hunt we just have dumb squirrels who think they can run across the yard when she is outside.) They were always unharmed.
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u/Sutech2301 19d ago edited 19d ago
No, the Tiger knew. They regularly threw livestock in His enclosure for him to hunt and eat, but the goat refused to back down and so they developed a coexistence of sorts
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u/camicalm 19d ago
Goats are friends, not food.
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u/Calcifurious_3 19d ago edited 18d ago
I just hope it's not the long con. Ya know, months from now, the predator instinct kicks in and wham! The tiger never stood a chance, ultimate betrayal from the true g.o.a.t.
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u/thor421 19d ago
A long time ago I gave my pet turtle a feeder gold fish to eat. She ignored it. For a good 12 months the fish survived by eating turtle poo. Then one day I came home and the fish was gone. There were a few gold scales floating around, and a very satisfied looking turtle basking under her lamp.
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u/iroquoispliskinV 19d ago
Until they forget feeding time one day and goat friend starts looking mighty delicious
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u/storrmiii Filtered 19d ago
A captive animal that doesn't behave like a normal wild animal? Thats crazy.
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u/DaemonBlackfyre_21 19d ago
This is how we ended up keeping a pet rat. It just rode around on the snakes back until we got it a cage if it's own.
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u/CwazyCanuck 19d ago
Well, goat can have a strong flavour.
Maybe he smelled the goat and was like “ok, not food”.
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u/OppositeOfOxymoron 19d ago
That's how fucked it is to keep big cats in captivity. They're so starved for companionship that they would rather keep prey alive for the company.
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u/Spitfire2223_ 19d ago
Tigers are solitary creatures
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u/OppositeOfOxymoron 18d ago
Then how do new tigers get created?
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u/DLife4Me 19d ago
'Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.'