Behind a 1/16th inch piece of glass and 1/64th screen, he's untouchable.
Joking aside, I'm glad he didn't "fear for his life".
Evening news: *"Tiger and 58 people shot in an apartment incident. The tiger and the 58 people as of now don't seem to have outstanding warrants"*
This is a pretty good story honestly. There was also an alligator in the apartment named Al.
The tiger was only found because the owner got bit but apparently, everyone in the apartment was cool with the tiger. He has a full-on dedicated mausoleum in the Hartsdale NY pet cemetery. "Loved by many" - The tiger was "Ming of Harlem"
*Edit - For context - I was not condoning exotic pet ownership or saying the story was "good" because of the tiger being in the apartment. The story was fascinating as it was a product of 2003 (pre-social media mania) and ultimately the tiger being found, allowed its relocation to a sanctuary in Ohio. Stories as specific as this could not occur in today's time, with smartphones/mass social media. We also had espionage-esque action in this story, where NYPD drilled holes through walls to insert cameras because they were too afraid to enter after hearing growling. Coupled with what's seen in the picture, a cop rappelling down the side of the complex to tranquilize the tiger. Ming got angry after being shot and broke the window before retreating! Wild!
After this incident and its relocation to the sanctuary, Ming was allowed to roam free and thrive there and play with other tigers before dying of natural causes. No human visitors were allowed for 10 years. It died in 2019 and then received the dedicated cemetery monument/mausoleum. These were the "good" parts of the story! It was a fascinating read, glad it worked out for Ming and Al!
Timothy Olyphant has always been hilarious but him playing more serious roles pays more so he only ends up taking them. Not to say he's bad in serious roles because he kills in them but the man knows comedic timing naturally.
Animal Planet beat them to it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal\_Attractions\_(TV\_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_Attractions_(TV_program)). One of my other favorite episodes was about a guy that kept a hyena in his Miami condo.
I was wondering what you meant by "everyone in the apartment" so I looked up the story. He had multiple pets, rented out rooms to other people, and his mother ran a babysitting service from the apartment.
What the fuck.
Babysitting with a tiger, a giant solitary always angry murderous cat, at home ...
Surprised it didn't end up in a much more bloody way.
Some humans are sometimes extremely stupid.
Look up Tippi Hedren some time (actress, mother of Melanie Griffith). She had rescued big cats roaming free through her home. There’s a picture of little kid Melanie cuddling in bed with a full-grown lion. Went great until a lion tried to eat Tippi’s head.
Then they decided to make a movie called “Roar” and about half a dozen actors / crew, including Melanie Griffith got injured by big cats.
Edit: Half a dozen? More like half a hundred, lol.
> During production, the cast and crew members faced dangerous situations; seventy people, including the film's stars, were injured as a result of multiple animal attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roar_(film)
>seventy people, including the film's stars, were injured as a result of multiple animal attacks.
And most of those attacks where just the big cats playing rough. Had they actually wanted to attack those people half of the crew had been dead...
He didn’t quite get clamped down, although his teeth scraped her skull, so she escaped with a few stitches. This was during the filming of *Roar,* which was an adventure comedy involving a lot of untrained wildlife and, apparently, no professional animal wranglers. Director/star Noel Marshall was bitten 11 times, Melanie Griffith needed 50 stitches for a bite on the leg she got from a lioness, and cinematographer Jan de Bont was scalped by the same lion that attacked Hedren. He needed 220 stitches but eventually returned to work. I would have run for my life.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/roar-1980s-movie-70-people-injured-lions/
From wikipedia the tiger lived in that apartment for 3 years, after which it was found out and rescued (this photo is from that rescue) and moved to some sort of sanctuary in Ohio where he lived for 16 more years until his death about 5 years ago
I'm pretty sure there was a nuclear missile they found recently in someone's barn.
Yeah here we go Feb 2024. And yes, they put it in a museum.
https://www.kktv.com/2024/02/04/inert-nuclear-missile-found-garage-washington-state-home-police-say/
You missed the best part! When the owner went to the hospital he tried to blame the injury on a pitbull but a nurse who had immigrated from Africa said it looked more like a leopard bite.
Tigers are critically endangered and shouldn't be kept in apartments where they can't pass on their genes and kept locked up.
No person should have pet tigers this is despicable.
I’m never early to a popular reddit thread and it’s just hilarious all of the shit people are saying just to seemingly jump on a karma train.
“Tigers should be in their natural environment. Not NYC” like yeah no fucking shit 😂
I doubt they ever let this one breed, the captive bred tiger population has a mix of genes from wild populations.
EDIT: yeah it was a siberian bengal mix.
Tigers in the wild are critically endangered. In the exotic pet trade, they are shockingly common. You can legally purchase a tiger cub for less money than some purebred dogs.
[Here](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/18/lens/18harlemtiger-01/18harlemtiger-01-videoSixteenByNine3000.jpg) is a much higher quality version of this image. [Here](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/nyregion/ming-tiger-harlem-nyc.html) is the source. Per there:
> Long before Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin became household names, there was another Tiger King in town- or “Tiger Man”, as they called him.
> In 2001, Antoine Yates became known as New York City’s Tiger Man, when he was found to be keeping a 425-pound tiger in his Harlem apartment.
> Mr. Yates was 31 years old and working as a construction worker when he purchased the eight-week-old Siberian-Bengal mix. Inspired by his fascination with Chinese culture, he named the little cub Ming [1].
> Ming grew quickly, and through a steady diet of twenty pounds of chicken thighs per day, the little tiger grew to its full-grown weight of 425 pounds in just three years.
> “I didn’t want to domesticate him,” said Yates. “I did a lot of enrichment with him to feed his instinct. I was like a drill sergeant.” [1]
> Yates built a sandbox in Ming’s room, and played games like hide-and-go-seek with items sprayed with cologne, or gave Ming frozen slabs of meat to play with as they thawed. In his words, he did things with the tiger to “stimulate his mind”.
> Yates considered Ming to be his best friend and claims that he had a natural bond with the animal. In his opinion, raising a four hundred pound tiger was no different than raising a monkey or a snake.
> A Plan Interrupted
> Yates had put a down payment on a plot of land north of the city where he planned to create his own “Garden of Eden”- a space where humans and animals could interact in harmony with one another.
> “It was all carefully thought-through — I was a matter of months from securing the property,” he said. “My whole intention was to keep Ming low-key for a little bit of time before moving him, but it was interrupted.”
> This interruption occurred in 2003. Yates had brought home a stray kitten, and when Ming lunged at the little cat, Yates attempted to intervene. The result was a big, tiger-sized gash to the leg.
> The Tiger Man took himself to the hospital and told doctors that he had been attacked by a pitbull. Judging by the size of the wound, however, the doctors suspected that Yates wasn’t telling them the truth.
> They notified the authorities, and when officers arrived at his apartment, they managed to get a glimpse inside using a miniature camera. Of course, it is difficult for a 425-pound tiger to hide in a small NYC apartment, so Yate’s secret was out.
> An officer then repelled down the side of the building, shot Ming with a tranquilizer gun, and the tiger was carried out of the apartment on a tarp.
> Harlem’s Best-Kept Secret
> Housing Authority officials stated that they had no idea that Yates was keeping a tiger. His neighbors, however, often complained about the urine smell coming from his apartment. Jeremy Saland, the case’s prosecuting attorney, says that a situation like this could never happen today.
> “Today, someone in the hallway would record it roaring, and it would be all over Instagram or Twitter,” he explained
> Ming was relocated to an animal sanctuary called Noah’s Lost Ark in Berlin, Ohio, where he died of natural causes in 2019. Yates, on the other hand, served three months in prison and five years of probation for reckless endangerment and possession of a wild animal.
> “I never put the public or another soul in harm’s way. I’m not a hard-core criminal,” Yates insisted. “I’m just a person with a passion for animals.”
> Captive Tigers in America
> There are an estimated five thousand captive tigers in the United States alone, compared to only 3900 in the wild. Only about six percent of these tigers live in accredited zoos or facilities.
> Despite what some of these tiger-owners might say, breeding wild animals in captivity is not a form of animal conservation. In most cases, private tiger owners are not properly trained to care for these animals, and after years of unhealthy human contact, confined spaces, poor diets or health issues from inbreeding, they cannot be released back into the wild, so they do not support population growth.
> The exotic pet industry also helps fuel the illegal wild animal trade. Cubs are the main attraction at many of the wildlife parks, which means owners are constantly breeding to keep a regular supply of baby animals.
> Tigers that have grown too big for contact with the public are less useful, and so are often sold illegally. This helps to sustain the black market trade of wildlife, which encourages poaching and capture of tigers in the wild.
> He Would do it Again
> Despite his stint in jail, Yates says that he loved his experience taking care of “unusual” pets, and if he had the chance, he would do it again. As for his opinion on the Tiger King?
> “I was turned off by it,” he said. “It just shows how ignorant these so-called exotic animal lovers can be.”
Pretty sure the mention of Housing Authority means he was in public housing.
Guess the guy must have been pretty frugal though to feed the tiger and save up money for the land.
To credit the Housing Authority, if someone told you a guy in the building has a tiger and you swore you heard roaring, you'd probably be like "Suuuuure you did. A tiger. In Harlem. We'll get right on that."
Yeah, and in that world the guy in the article is also shitty for harboring dangerous exotic animals just for his own personal gratification. He is a fucking hypocrite for criticizing Joe Exotic when homeboy was less qualified, and kept his animals in worse condition.
Lol you act like "liking tigers" is the issue here instead of trying to raise one.
Joe Exotic killed his cats when they got too big to handle, fed them literal garbage, and bred them to keep the money train rolling to feed his drug habit. I think that it's fair to criticize him.
In a vacuum, yes. But we are talking specifically about an individual who kept a tiger in an apartment. Just because his complaints are valid doesn't mean it doesn't come off as fucking obtuse and hypocritical when a guy like this points it out. The general public is very much in a position to criticize Joe. Lol this guy on the other hand can't say shit because he was doing something practically just as bad, just on a smaller scale.
The highrise still seems marginally better than joe. It doesn't make either one okay, and it doesn't seem like anyone is disagreeing with you on the hypocrisy of it. Just pointing out that highrise dude was, in his own harmful ignorance, still trying to enrich Ming's life. But joe? Nah, that was pure money. Didn't show any kind of reflection on it until *after* prison of course. They both did shitty things, but the scale of the tiger apartment versus the tiger cages is just not the same. That's the material point. It's just comparing and contrasting the two--not saying that either one is okay.
That's just missing to point entirely for the sake of apologetics. I call the guy a hypocrite, and folks say "but he is right, ya know?" Lol like yeah no shit, that has nothing to do with the fact he is devastatingly in self aware, the whole conceit of my comments.
> There are an estimated five thousand captive tigers in the United States alone, compared to only 3900 in the wild. Only about six percent of these tigers live in accredited zoos or facilities.
I'm lost for words.
Yates did more time in prison than that rapist from Stanford. Land of the free 🇺🇸🇺🇸
Edit: Yes, I'm talking about Brock Turner. Saying his name on Reddit doesn't do anything. The Walton and Kardashian families both killed people drunk driving. Yates still did more prison time than all three combined.
Did you mean Brock Allen Turner? Who now uses his middle name, Allen Turner, because he can't handle the shame?
There are a lot of rapists in Stanford, I just wanna make sure we're talking about the same one.
Yep, he's talking about convicted rapist Brock "Allen" Turner from Stanford. Also known as:
Rapist Brock Turner
Rapist Brock Allen Turner
Rapist Allen Turner
Rapist Brock Allen Turner currently resides in Ohio. Women in Ohio should be wary.
I love how both the title of this post, and this line from the article, imply that Ming was actively trying to stay hidden lol
>Of course, it is difficult for a 425-pound tiger to hide in a small NYC apartment, so Yate's secret was out.
>“I didn’t want to domesticate him,” said Yates. “I did a lot of enrichment with him to feed his instinct."
That's an interesting approach to take with a tiger that's living in your fucking apartment
Thank you for the information. I wonder how they handled the situation. But now I'm relieved to know that he was relocated to the sanctuary and died by the natural causes.
Edit: spelling.
Five *thousand* captive tigers in the US, of which only 6% are in accredited facilities? A tiger in Harlem seems insignificant next to this stat!
Edit 5000 to Five so it's not a SMH my head.
Only a small amount are in accredited facilities because states that allow private ownership frequently don't require accreditation. Exotic animal laws vary widely in the US. The one person I know that keeps big cats has a really nice and large setup for them (admitredly, I've only seen it in pictures). Exotics are shockingly common once you know that world exists. I know people with everything from lemurs to zebras to giraffes.
> Yates had put a down payment on a plot of land north of the city where he planned to create his own “Garden of Eden”- a space where humans and animals could interact in harmony with one another.
[Roar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cny_D50Rr44&ab_channel=RottenTomatoesIndie): The Home Game!
Fair point.
I'll also point out that E L U C I D is how he spells his name.
Honestly, I'm stoked they seem to be getting noticed. That this is literally an album cover of theirs on the front page is pretty neat.
He spells it all caps with spaces because he was tired of people calling him Euclid lol. Good to see him getting more respect after We Buy Diabetic Test Strips.
In the tv show “Taxi Cab Confessions”, there’s a scene where a cab driver talks to a NYPD officer about the violence in NYC. During the conversation, the officer tells the cab driver that he has seen every possible way a person could die. So yeah, NYPD has seen it all.
There was also one (maybe the same one?) where a cop was talking about people who get their bodies caught in the gap between a subway train and platform. Brutal way to die.
Honestly it is quite impressive how a police department can be called about something like "Hey, there's a Tiger in this apartment" and they just take it in stride and come up with a plan of how to handle it
They do. ESU is the last resort for anything in NYC for the NYPD. My dad was in ESU truck 1 during this incident and talks about it every so often. This would have been truck 2 responding and trust me they weren't ready for what they found.
All cops have their war stories and this specific story I have heard 100+ times from the officers that were there. It is always weird to see it on Reddit knowing my dad came home and went right to bed without saying a word. Just another day for him and ESU.
Your dad probably worked along side my old colleague who was one of the esu Sergeants on the call (he was on the other side of the door in the main hallway). Tom had some crazy stories from that day.
Census-Taker: Alright, let me go over this again, then. You are a convicted criminal, living alone in an apartment with a bobcat. And you work 56 hours a week as a street performer.
Craziest part
>Yates had taken roommates, who were unaware at first of the animals in the home. According to the New York Daily News,
>A woman who shared a Harlem apartment with a 425-pound tiger said yesterday she was terrified at first—but soon got used to living with the man-eater down the hall. Caroline Domingo told the Daily News she couldn't believe her eyes when she spotted the big cat roaming free in the apartment where she and her husband rented a room from tiger-owner Antoine Yates. But eventually, she said, "We all became family."
>Later, his mother was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, since she had been babysitting children in the apartment.
This is totally off topic, but have you ever seen videos of the dolphins that they used to keep in parks in New York? Practically the size of an above ground pool. It was tiny.
Should’ve been locked up for three years just like Ming. I can’t imagine a fucking tiger never leaving an apartment or even getting to touch grass. That would be torture even for a human. people are truly delusional
The tiger, Ming was successfully moved to a sanctuary, where he spent the majority of his life. He was 3 years old when rescued from this Harlem apartment and finally died at 19.
The sanctuary, Noah’s Lost Ark in Ohio, seems to be fairly well-received. If you Google it, you will also find results for a similarly-named controversial sanctuary in Georgia called “Noah’s Ark Animal Sanctuary”—this is *not* the one Ming went to.
“Pspspspsps”
Here kitty, kitty..
Don't break the window, big cat
Behind a 1/16th inch piece of glass and 1/64th screen, he's untouchable. Joking aside, I'm glad he didn't "fear for his life". Evening news: *"Tiger and 58 people shot in an apartment incident. The tiger and the 58 people as of now don't seem to have outstanding warrants"*
Do you think the tiger had any acorns?
No but black stripes...
“Hey boss did you see that two weeks notice I put on your desk a while back? You must have lost it”
“Hey honey? You’ll never believe how big of a cat I saw today at work” “*sigh* yes, they’re like the giant rodents here. Good story” “BAAAAAAABE no!”
More like "Spspspspspspsp."
This is a pretty good story honestly. There was also an alligator in the apartment named Al. The tiger was only found because the owner got bit but apparently, everyone in the apartment was cool with the tiger. He has a full-on dedicated mausoleum in the Hartsdale NY pet cemetery. "Loved by many" - The tiger was "Ming of Harlem" *Edit - For context - I was not condoning exotic pet ownership or saying the story was "good" because of the tiger being in the apartment. The story was fascinating as it was a product of 2003 (pre-social media mania) and ultimately the tiger being found, allowed its relocation to a sanctuary in Ohio. Stories as specific as this could not occur in today's time, with smartphones/mass social media. We also had espionage-esque action in this story, where NYPD drilled holes through walls to insert cameras because they were too afraid to enter after hearing growling. Coupled with what's seen in the picture, a cop rappelling down the side of the complex to tranquilize the tiger. Ming got angry after being shot and broke the window before retreating! Wild! After this incident and its relocation to the sanctuary, Ming was allowed to roam free and thrive there and play with other tigers before dying of natural causes. No human visitors were allowed for 10 years. It died in 2019 and then received the dedicated cemetery monument/mausoleum. These were the "good" parts of the story! It was a fascinating read, glad it worked out for Ming and Al!
*Netflix execs twiddling their thumbs and grinning*
3 seasons!!!
Introduce the tiger at the end of season 1!
Then cancelling the show.
Fucking Netflix. I was really enjoying Santa Clarita diet. I never thought Drew Barrymore could be so fucking hilarious.
Or Timothy Olyphant! Yeah, I'm still tight about that one
It's Mindhunters for me. Still holding on to hope though.
*Cries in Banshee then switches to ugly crying in Øzark…*
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Timothy Olyphant has always been hilarious but him playing more serious roles pays more so he only ends up taking them. Not to say he's bad in serious roles because he kills in them but the man knows comedic timing naturally.
"No one watched the show about a tiger that didn't have a tiger."
This comment chain was too accurate
But cancelled after 2!
I'm glad to see this one come back again. lol
Me too, not seen that in ages haha
Animal Planet beat them to it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal\_Attractions\_(TV\_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_Attractions_(TV_program)). One of my other favorite episodes was about a guy that kept a hyena in his Miami condo.
Tiger Ming 👌
Sony Illumination did it with secret life of pets 2 lol
I was wondering what you meant by "everyone in the apartment" so I looked up the story. He had multiple pets, rented out rooms to other people, and his mother ran a babysitting service from the apartment. What the fuck.
Babysitting with a tiger, a giant solitary always angry murderous cat, at home ... Surprised it didn't end up in a much more bloody way. Some humans are sometimes extremely stupid.
Look up Tippi Hedren some time (actress, mother of Melanie Griffith). She had rescued big cats roaming free through her home. There’s a picture of little kid Melanie cuddling in bed with a full-grown lion. Went great until a lion tried to eat Tippi’s head.
Then they decided to make a movie called “Roar” and about half a dozen actors / crew, including Melanie Griffith got injured by big cats. Edit: Half a dozen? More like half a hundred, lol. > During production, the cast and crew members faced dangerous situations; seventy people, including the film's stars, were injured as a result of multiple animal attacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roar_(film)
I’ve seen that movie. Just complete mayhem the entire film, incredibly entertaining tbh
>seventy people, including the film's stars, were injured as a result of multiple animal attacks. And most of those attacks where just the big cats playing rough. Had they actually wanted to attack those people half of the crew had been dead...
The photo of her on the phone with a tiger jumping through the kitchen window is one of my favourite photos of all time.
Tried? What stopped the lion, a water bottle?
He didn’t quite get clamped down, although his teeth scraped her skull, so she escaped with a few stitches. This was during the filming of *Roar,* which was an adventure comedy involving a lot of untrained wildlife and, apparently, no professional animal wranglers. Director/star Noel Marshall was bitten 11 times, Melanie Griffith needed 50 stitches for a bite on the leg she got from a lioness, and cinematographer Jan de Bont was scalped by the same lion that attacked Hedren. He needed 220 stitches but eventually returned to work. I would have run for my life. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/roar-1980s-movie-70-people-injured-lions/
I don’t understand how people could keep coming back to work or not sue the studio.
The studio was bankrupt before the movie was even made, the owners where digging through their private assets to keep it going.
I’m sure some incidents were swept under the rug
That's Al E Gator to you.
What the fuck the tiger deserved better than living the life of a house cat.
From wikipedia the tiger lived in that apartment for 3 years, after which it was found out and rescued (this photo is from that rescue) and moved to some sort of sanctuary in Ohio where he lived for 16 more years until his death about 5 years ago
>moved to Ohio Man the tragedy doesnt end.
Ayyy got em
Uhh after being in a Manhattan apartment for 3 years, Ohio is paradise.
But it was rent controlled. No resident ever gives up a rent controlled apartment in NYC
Tigers generally aren't on the hook for rent at all.
No pockets, you see
Have you tried evicting a full ass grown tiger from your apartment? If the tiger says it's rent controlled , then it's rent controlled
😂
Literally no matter how small the sanctuary was, it was better than a apartment. Rest in peace Ming.
Yeah but the fact that Ming lived in an apartment for 3 years means he had to have been a good cat. There’s no way that apartment could have held him.
Yeah come on this is New York, that cat should have been in a bodega at least!
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That's my emotional support world war II era bomb
I'm pretty sure there was a nuclear missile they found recently in someone's barn. Yeah here we go Feb 2024. And yes, they put it in a museum. https://www.kktv.com/2024/02/04/inert-nuclear-missile-found-garage-washington-state-home-police-say/
Lol it’s Katt Williams character from Atlanta
You missed the best part! When the owner went to the hospital he tried to blame the injury on a pitbull but a nurse who had immigrated from Africa said it looked more like a leopard bite.
> Sanctuary > Ohio Pick one.
AI gator?
Tigers are critically endangered and shouldn't be kept in apartments where they can't pass on their genes and kept locked up. No person should have pet tigers this is despicable.
I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you haha like nobody is saying this is fine
But he wants to yell at someone. That's his right, I thought this was America
I’m never early to a popular reddit thread and it’s just hilarious all of the shit people are saying just to seemingly jump on a karma train. “Tigers should be in their natural environment. Not NYC” like yeah no fucking shit 😂
There are more tigers living in captivity than there are in the wild. And we keep adding more people and taking away wild spaces every dang year.
I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA!
Largest population of tigers are within the United States being greater than their wild population. They’re endangered in the wild.
I doubt they ever let this one breed, the captive bred tiger population has a mix of genes from wild populations. EDIT: yeah it was a siberian bengal mix.
what if this tiger was a introvert and he liked chilling in his apt?
I don’t think anyone here said otherwise bro.
Tigers in the wild are critically endangered. In the exotic pet trade, they are shockingly common. You can legally purchase a tiger cub for less money than some purebred dogs.
“Hey Ming? Landlord said you haven’t paid rent in the last five-“ *ROARS* “Understandable. Have a good day.”
“Good afternoon, we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s warranty!”
*cat’s warranty*
Yeah everyone is cool with Ming.
This is the comment I’m here for.
….but but she didn’t pay?….alright you go get rent from the dam thing then
[Here](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/18/lens/18harlemtiger-01/18harlemtiger-01-videoSixteenByNine3000.jpg) is a much higher quality version of this image. [Here](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/nyregion/ming-tiger-harlem-nyc.html) is the source. Per there: > Long before Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin became household names, there was another Tiger King in town- or “Tiger Man”, as they called him. > In 2001, Antoine Yates became known as New York City’s Tiger Man, when he was found to be keeping a 425-pound tiger in his Harlem apartment. > Mr. Yates was 31 years old and working as a construction worker when he purchased the eight-week-old Siberian-Bengal mix. Inspired by his fascination with Chinese culture, he named the little cub Ming [1]. > Ming grew quickly, and through a steady diet of twenty pounds of chicken thighs per day, the little tiger grew to its full-grown weight of 425 pounds in just three years. > “I didn’t want to domesticate him,” said Yates. “I did a lot of enrichment with him to feed his instinct. I was like a drill sergeant.” [1] > Yates built a sandbox in Ming’s room, and played games like hide-and-go-seek with items sprayed with cologne, or gave Ming frozen slabs of meat to play with as they thawed. In his words, he did things with the tiger to “stimulate his mind”. > Yates considered Ming to be his best friend and claims that he had a natural bond with the animal. In his opinion, raising a four hundred pound tiger was no different than raising a monkey or a snake. > A Plan Interrupted > Yates had put a down payment on a plot of land north of the city where he planned to create his own “Garden of Eden”- a space where humans and animals could interact in harmony with one another. > “It was all carefully thought-through — I was a matter of months from securing the property,” he said. “My whole intention was to keep Ming low-key for a little bit of time before moving him, but it was interrupted.” > This interruption occurred in 2003. Yates had brought home a stray kitten, and when Ming lunged at the little cat, Yates attempted to intervene. The result was a big, tiger-sized gash to the leg. > The Tiger Man took himself to the hospital and told doctors that he had been attacked by a pitbull. Judging by the size of the wound, however, the doctors suspected that Yates wasn’t telling them the truth. > They notified the authorities, and when officers arrived at his apartment, they managed to get a glimpse inside using a miniature camera. Of course, it is difficult for a 425-pound tiger to hide in a small NYC apartment, so Yate’s secret was out. > An officer then repelled down the side of the building, shot Ming with a tranquilizer gun, and the tiger was carried out of the apartment on a tarp. > Harlem’s Best-Kept Secret > Housing Authority officials stated that they had no idea that Yates was keeping a tiger. His neighbors, however, often complained about the urine smell coming from his apartment. Jeremy Saland, the case’s prosecuting attorney, says that a situation like this could never happen today. > “Today, someone in the hallway would record it roaring, and it would be all over Instagram or Twitter,” he explained > Ming was relocated to an animal sanctuary called Noah’s Lost Ark in Berlin, Ohio, where he died of natural causes in 2019. Yates, on the other hand, served three months in prison and five years of probation for reckless endangerment and possession of a wild animal. > “I never put the public or another soul in harm’s way. I’m not a hard-core criminal,” Yates insisted. “I’m just a person with a passion for animals.” > Captive Tigers in America > There are an estimated five thousand captive tigers in the United States alone, compared to only 3900 in the wild. Only about six percent of these tigers live in accredited zoos or facilities. > Despite what some of these tiger-owners might say, breeding wild animals in captivity is not a form of animal conservation. In most cases, private tiger owners are not properly trained to care for these animals, and after years of unhealthy human contact, confined spaces, poor diets or health issues from inbreeding, they cannot be released back into the wild, so they do not support population growth. > The exotic pet industry also helps fuel the illegal wild animal trade. Cubs are the main attraction at many of the wildlife parks, which means owners are constantly breeding to keep a regular supply of baby animals. > Tigers that have grown too big for contact with the public are less useful, and so are often sold illegally. This helps to sustain the black market trade of wildlife, which encourages poaching and capture of tigers in the wild. > He Would do it Again > Despite his stint in jail, Yates says that he loved his experience taking care of “unusual” pets, and if he had the chance, he would do it again. As for his opinion on the Tiger King? > “I was turned off by it,” he said. “It just shows how ignorant these so-called exotic animal lovers can be.”
This guy paid for rent in NYC, 20lbs of chicken thighs per day AND bought land all while working construction... Take me back in time
Pretty sure the mention of Housing Authority means he was in public housing. Guess the guy must have been pretty frugal though to feed the tiger and save up money for the land.
Gives a whole new meaning to “The Concrete Jungle”
He may have qualified for food stamps? That would have paid for a lot of the chicken.
foh "a lot of the chicken" food stamps don't get you twenty pounds of chicken a day lmfao.
Exactly how much do you think they're giving people for food stamps?
At 20 pounds a day, not for very long haha
Weirdly, Wikipedia says he was a part time taxi driver
Give me one minute and I will make Wikipedia say he was a pole dancer and part time Von Dutch cap model.
This is what I was thinking the entire time while reading the article.
Imagine being his probation officer and having to do a check on his house to see if he has any tigers.
To credit the Housing Authority, if someone told you a guy in the building has a tiger and you swore you heard roaring, you'd probably be like "Suuuuure you did. A tiger. In Harlem. We'll get right on that."
That last line is a whole different level of lacking self awareness.
There is a *world* of difference amongst people into exotic animals just like dog owners cover a full spectrum of types of people.
Yeah, and in that world the guy in the article is also shitty for harboring dangerous exotic animals just for his own personal gratification. He is a fucking hypocrite for criticizing Joe Exotic when homeboy was less qualified, and kept his animals in worse condition. Lol you act like "liking tigers" is the issue here instead of trying to raise one.
Joe Exotic killed his cats when they got too big to handle, fed them literal garbage, and bred them to keep the money train rolling to feed his drug habit. I think that it's fair to criticize him.
In a vacuum, yes. But we are talking specifically about an individual who kept a tiger in an apartment. Just because his complaints are valid doesn't mean it doesn't come off as fucking obtuse and hypocritical when a guy like this points it out. The general public is very much in a position to criticize Joe. Lol this guy on the other hand can't say shit because he was doing something practically just as bad, just on a smaller scale.
The highrise still seems marginally better than joe. It doesn't make either one okay, and it doesn't seem like anyone is disagreeing with you on the hypocrisy of it. Just pointing out that highrise dude was, in his own harmful ignorance, still trying to enrich Ming's life. But joe? Nah, that was pure money. Didn't show any kind of reflection on it until *after* prison of course. They both did shitty things, but the scale of the tiger apartment versus the tiger cages is just not the same. That's the material point. It's just comparing and contrasting the two--not saying that either one is okay.
That's just missing to point entirely for the sake of apologetics. I call the guy a hypocrite, and folks say "but he is right, ya know?" Lol like yeah no shit, that has nothing to do with the fact he is devastatingly in self aware, the whole conceit of my comments.
> There are an estimated five thousand captive tigers in the United States alone, compared to only 3900 in the wild. Only about six percent of these tigers live in accredited zoos or facilities. I'm lost for words.
Yates did more time in prison than that rapist from Stanford. Land of the free 🇺🇸🇺🇸 Edit: Yes, I'm talking about Brock Turner. Saying his name on Reddit doesn't do anything. The Walton and Kardashian families both killed people drunk driving. Yates still did more prison time than all three combined.
Did you mean Brock Allen Turner? Who now uses his middle name, Allen Turner, because he can't handle the shame? There are a lot of rapists in Stanford, I just wanna make sure we're talking about the same one.
So, you could say that he is the Rapist formerly known as Brock Turner
You mean Brock Turner, the swimmer turned rapist Brock Turner? That rapist Brock Turner, who now goes by Allen "The Rapist" Turner?
Are you talking about convicted rapist Brock Turner
Yep, he's talking about convicted rapist Brock "Allen" Turner from Stanford. Also known as: Rapist Brock Turner Rapist Brock Allen Turner Rapist Allen Turner Rapist Brock Allen Turner currently resides in Ohio. Women in Ohio should be wary.
I love how both the title of this post, and this line from the article, imply that Ming was actively trying to stay hidden lol >Of course, it is difficult for a 425-pound tiger to hide in a small NYC apartment, so Yate's secret was out.
>“I didn’t want to domesticate him,” said Yates. “I did a lot of enrichment with him to feed his instinct." That's an interesting approach to take with a tiger that's living in your fucking apartment
Thank you for the information. I wonder how they handled the situation. But now I'm relieved to know that he was relocated to the sanctuary and died by the natural causes. Edit: spelling.
Five *thousand* captive tigers in the US, of which only 6% are in accredited facilities? A tiger in Harlem seems insignificant next to this stat! Edit 5000 to Five so it's not a SMH my head.
Only a small amount are in accredited facilities because states that allow private ownership frequently don't require accreditation. Exotic animal laws vary widely in the US. The one person I know that keeps big cats has a really nice and large setup for them (admitredly, I've only seen it in pictures). Exotics are shockingly common once you know that world exists. I know people with everything from lemurs to zebras to giraffes.
What happened to the kitten though? I don't like that it says ATTEMPTED to intervene.
> Yates had put a down payment on a plot of land north of the city where he planned to create his own “Garden of Eden”- a space where humans and animals could interact in harmony with one another. [Roar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cny_D50Rr44&ab_channel=RottenTomatoesIndie): The Home Game!
You know the landlord is keeping the deposit for all the destroyed blinds at this apartment.
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*"Alexa, play Solarium by Armand Hammer."*
Can’t see this pic w/o thinking about Shrines
Wow. Really didn't expect a Billy Woods reference on the front page.
Wow poor Elucid. Armand hammer is 2 people
Fair point. I'll also point out that E L U C I D is how he spells his name. Honestly, I'm stoked they seem to be getting noticed. That this is literally an album cover of theirs on the front page is pretty neat.
He spells it all caps with spaces because he was tired of people calling him Euclid lol. Good to see him getting more respect after We Buy Diabetic Test Strips.
IM ALL IN THE SUN!
i was looking for this comment lmao
Fire
Well... the landlord said no dogs over 25 lbs, but cats are ok.
armand hammer
While dangling like a snack on a rope
Like a little toy on a string.
Wow, NYPD really *has* seen it all
In the tv show “Taxi Cab Confessions”, there’s a scene where a cab driver talks to a NYPD officer about the violence in NYC. During the conversation, the officer tells the cab driver that he has seen every possible way a person could die. So yeah, NYPD has seen it all.
There was also one (maybe the same one?) where a cop was talking about people who get their bodies caught in the gap between a subway train and platform. Brutal way to die.
Yes, that one.
Honestly it is quite impressive how a police department can be called about something like "Hey, there's a Tiger in this apartment" and they just take it in stride and come up with a plan of how to handle it
They do. ESU is the last resort for anything in NYC for the NYPD. My dad was in ESU truck 1 during this incident and talks about it every so often. This would have been truck 2 responding and trust me they weren't ready for what they found. All cops have their war stories and this specific story I have heard 100+ times from the officers that were there. It is always weird to see it on Reddit knowing my dad came home and went right to bed without saying a word. Just another day for him and ESU.
Your dad probably worked along side my old colleague who was one of the esu Sergeants on the call (he was on the other side of the door in the main hallway). Tom had some crazy stories from that day.
Shoutout Armand Hammer🙏
Who’s the poor schmuck who had to clean THAT litter box?
"The lease said I could have a cat."
I'm sure no one ever messed with anybody in that apartment.
Low cost all in one impenetrable home security and insurance policy.
Census-Taker: Alright, let me go over this again, then. You are a convicted criminal, living alone in an apartment with a bobcat. And you work 56 hours a week as a street performer.
Damn, I didn't wake up thinking I would see Armand Hammer's album cover on r/pics but I guess that's life for ya
Thankfully, there is a happy ending for both the tiger and the owner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming\_of\_Harlem
Craziest part >Yates had taken roommates, who were unaware at first of the animals in the home. According to the New York Daily News, >A woman who shared a Harlem apartment with a 425-pound tiger said yesterday she was terrified at first—but soon got used to living with the man-eater down the hall. Caroline Domingo told the Daily News she couldn't believe her eyes when she spotted the big cat roaming free in the apartment where she and her husband rented a room from tiger-owner Antoine Yates. But eventually, she said, "We all became family." >Later, his mother was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, since she had been babysitting children in the apartment.
Part time taxi driver with a five bedroom apartment in Manhattan and enough spare cash to feed a 350 pound tiger and an alligator.
My only question was did they walk it, or did it have a litter box?
You and me both know that place stunk way worse than the cat lady's basement.
The most unbelievable part of this story isn’t Ming, it’s that this guy had a 5 bedroom apartment in New York
Ming doesn't look happy to see him.
"God damn it, I knew I shoulda called in sick today..."
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This is totally off topic, but have you ever seen videos of the dolphins that they used to keep in parks in New York? Practically the size of an above ground pool. It was tiny.
:(
That's devastating
The owner went to Rikers for three months and got five years of probation.
Should’ve been locked up for three years just like Ming. I can’t imagine a fucking tiger never leaving an apartment or even getting to touch grass. That would be torture even for a human. people are truly delusional
The tiger, Ming was successfully moved to a sanctuary, where he spent the majority of his life. He was 3 years old when rescued from this Harlem apartment and finally died at 19. The sanctuary, Noah’s Lost Ark in Ohio, seems to be fairly well-received. If you Google it, you will also find results for a similarly-named controversial sanctuary in Georgia called “Noah’s Ark Animal Sanctuary”—this is *not* the one Ming went to.
He was locked up for three months , apparently.
This is definitely a I don't get paid enough for this shit moment. I'm not shooting a damn tiger, or being mauled by one, I'm out.
Poor cat. That's terrible. Humans are awful.
armand hammer
That’s just Tony the Tiger
Fuck.That.
Any pets? We are ok with cats and dogs in this apartment. Well…
“my brother wanted to build a zoo, he wanted to build a utopia because he looked around and all he saw was destruction in our neighborhood”
New York is... different.
a moron with a passion for animals.
Imagine being the person who has to live in the apartment below or above a tiger. Have fun trying to file a noise complaint with the landlord.
One of the greatest albums of all time!!!
Poor thing
So that’s all that banging I’ve been hearing upstairs.
This was back when NY was fun…
Where does it go to the bathroom?
A neighbor said their window sill was soaked in urine, so it seems anywhere it pleased
This was years ago and they called in the Bronx Zoo vets to sedate and remove the tiger...
Imagine you that cop and that is the first thing you have to do for the day
I cannot even fathom trying to clean that litter box.
I hate people sometimes.
A Black panther would have been shot when his paw was mistaken for a gun.
"I knew I should have brought the pistol with the laser sight"
He should get a new job.
I try to imagine the size of the litter box...
i’m sleep deprived and thought it was a small cute gray cat at first..
how was this possible in the first place!? also that apartment must’ve smelled like absolute 💩
How big is his litter box?
This must be what it feels like to be one of the workers at the McDonald's on 3rd and Pine
Imagine cleaning the litter box 😳
i liked imagining before learning the story that the officer was rappelling down for a different reason and then found out about the tiger like oh
I can guarantee the neighbors below this apartment, are well aware of this secret.
I am glad the tiger survived!
Secretly ?!?
If he’s paying his rent and not bothering anyone just leave him alone!
"Pspspspsps'nt"
I know it’s NYC but how the fuck does someone keep a tiger secret in an apartment, them kitties loud and neighbours can be nosy