years. what we see in the tiger cub encounter industry is the cubs are taken from their mothers sometimes hours after they re born. and these are cubs whose immune systems aren t fully developed. it s unhealthy for the cubs and awful for the mothers. in the wild, one tiger would maybe give birth six times. but we re seeing tigers in the captive industry bred dozens of times, which is physically exhausting, and it s traumatic for them every time their babies are taken from them. this kind of animal cruelty for profit is so disturbing. it makes me wonder how it could still be legal anywhere in america. but the regulations for the breeding and ownership of exotic animals are left to individual states. six of them have no regulations at all, which is why joe exotic,
and elusive they are very rarely spotted. one of the things we want to see if we can pick up dna. before i put the whole field team in indonesia we want to be certain that it works. she can check her trace dna technology with the tigers before taking it into the wild. so you will spread soil here? yes. the goal is to see if we can pick up cat dna. on doing this so i can pick it up very clearly. she will try to coax this for-year-old male tiger to walk through the soil. he is very personable and eager to please. is a perfect candidate for this morning. tiger one, this is tiger two. you are clear to release. copy that. come on.
hand? tiger trail. here at the san diego zoo safari park, there are over 300 different species. look, look, look there. there s a tiger. do you see it? yeah. including the sumatrin tiger. it s coming towards us. come here. can you make that noise? over the last 30 years the zoo has carefully bred and raised the tigers to help presearrve t subspecies on the brink of extinction. this is called its habitat. this is where it lives where s it s house? in there. according to the wildlife federation, the number of tigers in the wild dropped but in america there is as many as
phone to track the genetic code from the paw print in real time. in this case the dna definitely belongs to recon. you are able to determine exactly which tiger. yes. now instead of saying we have seen 40 prints in this three kilometers square area, you can say those 40 prints come down to 4 tigers and that gives us more power in terms of how we go about counting them. she plans to take her trace dna system to some mantra as soon as possible. she is in a race against time and destruction. they are critically endangered. 70% of the forest cover in the island is gone over the last few decades. tigers are illegally hunted for whiskers, teeth, bones and claws and their remaining habitats are being destroyed by
$1,800. the seller told me he needed the full amount up front, and i ended the conversation. i wanted to know just how real this industry is. so i reached out to an expert. i want to show you we were trying to buy some tigers online just to see how easy or hard it might be. yeah. brittany pete has been an attorney with the peta foundation for 13 years. she s an authority on the exotic animal trade. i had an exchange with someone online. i want you to read it. we also do overnight delivery, and you will be provided with a tracking number. but they were saying things like fedex, ups. is that how cubs are transported, through fedex? definitely not. it s illegal, so the u.s. postal service and fedex and ups aren t transporting cubs. brittany tells me the photos shown on the websites are also dubious.