Tinder Tells Swipers to Take Down the Tiger Selfies

No tiger on Earth has ever wanted to help a human score a date or a hookup, and the popular dating app Tinder has asked its users to ditch the tiger photos now.

“Posing next to a king of the jungle doesn’t make you one,” the matchmaking company said in a news release. “It’s time for the tiger selfies to go. More often than not, these photos take advantage of beautiful creatures that have been torn from their natural environment. Wild animals deserve to live in the wild.”

Tinder agreed with PETA that in honor of International Tiger Day, the company should rid its platform of tiger photos. It also said that it plans to donate $10,000 to tiger conservation.

Tinder users are known for crafting funny, entertaining profiles, so the company reminded them that it’s easy to come up with great ideas to compensate for the removal of these photos from their profiles.

“[W]e promise that your profile will be just as fierce without the drugged animals,” Tinder said. And studies have shown that kindness is the best way to leave someone all hot and bothered. Kudos to Tinder for this compassionate decision!

Behind every photo op or paid ‘encounter’ with an exotic animal is a life of deprivation.

No animal chooses to take photos with numerous strangers, day in and day out. In order to force captive animals to perform on cue, trainers often “break their spirits” by beating them into submission. Not surprisingly, these encounters can turn dangerous when wild animals have direct contact with the public.

Most cubs exploited for photo ops were removed from their mothers within hours or days of birth so that they could get “used to” being handled by people. In their natural habitat, tiger cubs are protected and nurtured by their mothers for two years.

Once these animals used as photo props are no longer babies and have become too large and dangerous to use for pictures, they’re typically shipped off to roadside zoos or warehoused and neglected. Because the window of profitability is so short, breeders constantly churn out babies so that they always have an “inventory” of cubs available.

Keep Your Photos Compassionate

Never patronize a place that sells animal encounters or photo ops, and leave wildlife in peace. If there’s any risk that your photo or encounter is going to hurt or stress an animal, it’s not worth it.

And here’s a free dating tip from PETA: We all know compassionate action is sexy, so go vegan today!