Easier to buy a tiger than adopt a dog in parts of the US, documentary says 15/01/2021, 12:26 am
It is easier to buy a tiger than adopt a dog in some parts of the US, investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller has said (National Geographic/Muck Media/PA)
It is easier to buy a tiger than adopt a dog in some parts of the US, an investigative journalist has said.
The murky world of the big cat trade hit the headlines last year with Netflix’s wildly popular docuseries Tiger King.
It featured eccentric zoo owner Joe Exotic, who kept dozens of animals – including tigers and lions – at a compound in Oklahoma.
Peabody Award-winning Portuguese journalist Mariana van Zeller spends her new eight-part National Geographic documentary series,
Trafficked, infiltrating gangs of fentanyl peddlers, gunrunners, and tiger smugglers. But the hardest group to penetrate, she tells
Los Angeles, was the pimps of Los Angeles.
“We contacted over one hundred pimps, and less than a handful were willing to sit down with us and talk,” van Zeller says. “We had to postpone the shoot several times.”
On the series’ fifth episode (airing December 23), Van Zeller quickly discovers that L.A.’s pimps, although wary of journalists, are actually hiding in plain sight. On Instagram, she finds pimps luring women with photos of sports cars, diamonds, and stacks of cash, and using a system of coded hashtags, such as “304,” which spells “hoe” upside-down.