The Sriracha Tiger Zoo was a zoo in Sri Racha, a city on the outskirts of Pattaya, a seaside city in Chonburi Province, Thailand. It was about 110 km (68 mi) from Bangkok. The zoo claimed a large population of tigers and crocodiles.
Due to the economy's collapse in 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sriracha Tiger Zoo had to close its doors.[1][2]
Internet meme
Photographs of a female tiger nursing piglets wrapped in tiger skin, accompanied by a fictitious story about a zoo in California, were actually taken at Sriracha.[3]
Controversy
The Animal Welfare Institute reported in 2004 that the zoo had been using tigers and elephants in circus shows, including tigers leaping through rings of fire, walking across a double tightrope, parading around a ring on hind legs, and riding on horseback.[4] AWI reported "potentially dangerous human-tiger and human-elephant close interaction", "bizarre multi-species enclosures", tigers being struck with steel poles by trainers and implications that tigers were being bred for export to China.[4]
World Animal Protection reported in 2016 that the tigers 'appeared in the poorest condition of all those observed in our research.'[5]