I’m guessing “yes,” but–and realizing that we can’t read their minds–why? Wouldn’t it see me as “the parent,” and in the wild bears and big cats don’t normally try to eat their parents.
It wouldn’t NECESSARILY try to eat you or even hurt you, but an adult animal doesn’t relate to its parents the way a human does.
A human continues to feel ties of affection and loyalty to his/her parents long after the parent has ceased feeding and caring for it. Such behavior is VERY rare among mammals. Most predatory animals have no “relationship” with their fathers (who usually stay around just long enough to impregnate the mothers), and most have no relationship with their mothers once they’re big enough to fend for themselves.
A few years after a young tiger or bear leaves its mother, it’s not likely to remember her if he runs into her a few years later… and even if he does, it’s not likely to be a joyous reunion. He may view her as a potential rival for food, or if he’s in the mood for love, he may even regard her as a possible mate. But tigers and bears generally don’t have long-term family ties or loyalties.
A bear or tiger raised in captivity may get used to people, may even like people a little. But they’re NOT social animals by nature, and THAT’S what really makes them dangerous. Even if they’re well fed and well cared for, they’re NOT hard-wired for friendship or social interaction.
I had a kitty cat that I raised from a kitten so small that the whole kitty except for tail would fit into my closed fist. Eyedropper full of KMR…closed eyes, mostly belly and head and almost vestigially-small kittyfeets. When Microkitty (a week or so older here) had put on a few months, he found it most amusing to pounce upon my hand, rotating his body around it so as to get access with the back claws as well, and get a good grip, following which he would chomp down.
I read somewhere that kitties and puppies learn from their moms and littermates what the limits of play are, and from this they learn to lighten up unless they’re really trying to kill something (and risk having that “something” do its reciprocal best). To some extent MK eventually got the idea that it wasn’t nice to put crimson drippy rally striped up and down our extremities, a lesson we were able to impart successfully, I believe, because we were larger than the cute little monster by a factor of 20 or thereabouts.
I understand the attraction of holding a cute little newborn Siberian tiger kitty, but keep in mind that, quite aside from legality questions, it’s gonna have paws the size of dinner plates and teeth like a rack of Henkel knives right around the time it gets seriously interested in wrestling and pouncing on anything that moves just for the sheer joy of it.
The Alaska Zoo put an orphaned polar bear cub and black bear cub (named them Aphun and Oreo) in the same enclosure. They got along famously when cubs and delighted onlookers with their antics. Now that they are about two or three years old, they have had to be separated because the play has turned to territorial fighting. The old nature vs nurture thing, I guess.
It seems even the trainers that have worked with big cats since birth are extremely cautious around them.
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- You can look it up yourself, but a couple years back one of the pair of Seigfried and Roy got himself a new ***hole torn when one of their famed “white tigers” that they let roam around the house decided to “play” with him.
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- You can look it up yourself, but a couple years back one of the pair of Seigfried and Roy got himself a new ***hole torn when one of their famed “white tigers” that they let roam around the house decided to “play” with him.
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Clearly you folks have never watched Grizzly Adams or you would know that bears raised from birth by people will go on to hang out with the person who raised him as well as being available to get that person out of scrapes when need be. Sort of like a really big dog.
Sheesh
Bunnies, of course, will tear you to ribbons.
I agree with AHunter3. When my cat was young it was cute how he’d pounce on me or take a swipe at my feet when I’m sitting on a chair or how he would playfully try to remove my eye balls when I was sleeping.
Now imagine a 250 lbs cat like that. Sure he might not want to hurt you but that’s hardly going to help when that jaw clamps down…on your entire head. Or his 6 inch claws disembowel you when he playfully takes a swipe at ya.
Bears and tigers are very different animals. Tigers are always dangerous while bears can be more domesticated. I suppose the sex of the animal also makes a difference.
Yeah, if it’s not getting any, you’d better watch out when it tries to hump your leg! :eek:
Generally for animal trainers, there is a hiearchy of tractability for large carnivores. Among the big cats, female lions are generally considered the best, as they are most likely to make a lasting social bond ( I remember reading of one trainer who was being mauled by an irate tiger, that was saved by his favorite lion ). Leopards are purportedly the worst.
On the one hand, all of these large predators can be trained to a limited extent by a truly skilled, fearless person. In an artificial environment, where the “mother” ( trainer ) and “cub” ( animal in question ) are never separated, even normally solitary species can sometimes continue to maintain a familiar bond of some sort.
On the other, they obviously aren’t domesticated, some individual adult big cats and bears are probably never trainable, and even trained animals are always potentially very dangerous and unpredictable. Just about any trainer that works with large predators usually has some pretty good scars.
A fairly recent novel, called The Final Confessions of Mabel Stark, is a fact-based faux memoir of a real person, a famous tiger-trainer in 1920’s and 30’s in particular. She worked exclusively with tigers and adored them. But she was seriously mauled several times and by the time she died ( 1968, I think ), she was covered in head to toe with scars.
- Tamerlane
No matter how bad the risk of getting seriously torn up, its still better than dealing with a divorce lawyer. I say go for it.
Marriage isn’t a word. Its a sentence.
Funny you should mention that. The aforementioned Mabel Stark was the first to introduce “tiger-wrestling” to an animal act. She’d get in the ring with her hand-raised Bengal, Rajah, and surrepitiously signal him by whistling and he’d come charging out and tackle her. They’d role around, looking for all the world like she was being horribly mauled, while people shrieked and a few brave souls tried to rush the cage to save her. Then, she’d suddenly get up, unharmed, to cheers and acclaim.
But in fact, unbeknownst to the crowd, Rajah was…ahem…acting in a typical cat-like amorous fashion - grabbing the head and holding her down and…
Well, it is about this time she switched from her trademark black leather uniform, to white, to conceal the final result of his “performances” :D.
- Tamerlane
Yep: as others have said. You’ll have an animal that’s nominally tame in that it’s lost its fear of humans - but that same lack of fear will mean it’s completely uninhibited if it gets angry/horny/territorial. A recent British documentary featured a guy who’d brought up an otter from cub, and it bit some of his fingers off when it freaked over him wearing an unfamiliar pullover. Likewise, there was a recent case of a badger brought up in captivity, again more or less tame, that escaped and seriously mauled someone’s arm, bit other people, and finally had to be shot by police.
Tamerlane’s post reminded me that a cheetah, raised from kittenhood, will grow up to be a fair pet. At one time, rich people in India, among other places, kept them as hunting “dogs”. They don’t breed in captivity, however, because the male and female cheetah have to run together for miles in order to get into the mood–impractical if they live in your back yard.
Undomesticated baby animals will grow up to be undomesticated adult animals. Period.
They may be trained adult undomesticated animals, but they’re still undomesticated. They may be attempted to kept as pets, but they’re still undomesticated.
Undomesticated means they’re genetically wild, unpredisposed to being part of the home (the literal definition of domesticated, means ‘homed’). Wild instincts will always be present, and can come out at any moment.
Look how domesticated animals… cats, dogs, even cows… will sometimes revert to instinct and harm humans, intentionally and unintentionally.
Even more so for undomesticated animals.
Domestication needs to bred into the animal, literally bred in over generations selectively choosing tameable traits. An exmperiment (albeit a questionable one) with wild foxes was able to create a domesticated fox in forty generations. (Cite).
So, for all those ferret, otter, badger, ground hog, mongoose, hawk, big cat, bear, monkey owners who think that they baby animal they raised is now a domesticated pet… they’re friggin insane.
Peace.
In response to the OP: best not to coat yourself in milk & honey.
I understand that cheetahs can (finally) be bredd reliably in captivity. (No cite.)
Nitpick: Ferrets are domesticated.
Paul in Saudi: Oooh. Big kitties. 
One cannot domesticate a single individual.
Domestication is the process of selecting tractable individuals for breeding, over (many) successive generations. (my definition, not a quote).
~W
The TV channel Animal Planet runs a program every now and then of a group of Asian(?) monks who have a large group of tame tigers. The monks play in the water with the cats, take them for walks, etc. and even have a tiger petting area where visitors can mingle with them.
There are some no-no’s. For example, f the cats rear up to put their front paws on the shoulders they are chastized because a tiger weighs enough to injure someone without trying to.
It seems to me that tigers might be particularly amenable to this. I also believe that ocelots were an occasional pet of the rich in the 20’s and early '30’s.
And then there was the trained bear, or bears, in the TV series* Gentle Ben.*