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Tourists frequented Thailand’s Tiger Temple to take these types of photos. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Summary: Thai authorities shut down a popular tourist spot after finding evidence of animal abuse.Â
Forty dead tiger cubs were found in a freezer inside of a Buddhist temple in Thailand. The Tiger Temple is a Buddhist landmark that is a tourist favorite, but for years, animal charities have begged for it to be shut down, citing animal cruelty and trafficking. On Tuesday, authorities raided the now-closed premises, and their findings were grim.
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In addition to the forty tigers, authorizes found a dead bear and a binturong, a type of bearcat. Additionally, there were other unidentified animal body parts discovered in the freezer. The Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand said on Facebook that the animals were not registered, and it was unclear how they met their ends.
According to Buzzfeed, Tiger Temple was a favorite of visitors who wanted to take pictures with a tiger, a seemingly favorite past time of people on Tinder. However, animal rights groups were suspicious of how the animals were treated. Adison Nuchdamrong of the Department of National Parks said he was unsure of why the temple would keep the dead bodies, but he assumed there must have been some kind of value in it.
Nuchdamrong said authorities were working to remove the rest of the 87 live tigers from the Temple, and 52 were already confiscated. Another official said that the tigers would be kept in different wildlife centers because they were bred for captivity and more likely not able to survive in the wild.
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The Temple took to Facebook to deny any wrongdoing. The monks stated that the animals were not removed because of animal cruelty, and that any animals injured were hurt because of DNP officials’ mishandling. The monks also vehemently denied that they ever engaged in tiger trafficking.
Currently, tigers are rare. A century ago there were approximately 100,000 tigers in Asia, but now there are at most 3,200. Reasons for the population decline include deforestation, poaching, and trafficking.
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Why do you think the monks kept the tigers in the freezer? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Buzzfeed
