Tigers aren’t sexy.
That’s the message from the dating app Tinder, which this week asked its users to stop posting photos of themselves with the big cats.
The photos, taken at tourist attractions with captive animals, may look cool, but “many of these wild animals are taken from their mothers as babies and forced to endure cruel and intensive training to make them ‘safe’ to interact with tourists,” said Cassandra Koenen, head of wildlife campaigns at World Animal Protection.
Tinder agrees, saying “we promise that your profile will be just as fierce without the drugged animals.”
If you really want to show that you love animals, Tinder has a better suggestion: post photos of yourself volunteering at an animal shelter.
All domesticated animals cause ecological harm. I fully agree that kidnapping native wild animals is worse than breeding pets, but dogs and cats are harmful to native wildlife, and dogs, which are not native to anywhere, dig up the ground, which kills plants (not to mention their annoying qualities like their poop and barking).
If humans desire non-human company, they need to limit their families to one child to lower human population in order to make room for a lot more wildlife, and they need to live a lot more simply and naturally to decrease the immoral and gross overconsumption that’s eating up our planet. When your world is filled with wildlife you won’t desire a pet, and if you have proper respect for animals you don’t take pictures with kidnapped & tortured domesticated ones.