Before There Was The Tiger King, There Was New York City's Tiger Man
Long before the world was ever exposed to Tiger King, Joe Exotic, a man dubbed the Tiger Man was living in a Harlem apartment with a big cat of his own.
The world has become obsessed with Netflix's seven-part docuseries, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, Madness over the past month. A tale of a group of exotic pet owners dotted across the United States who effectively went to war with each other. The show features polygamy, murder plots, country music, and oh yeah, a whole bunch of tigers.
Everything else aside, the show will have had most viewers wondering what would possess anyone to keep a wild animal as a pet. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't watched the show yet, but within its first few episodes, an employee of Joe Exotic's zoo has their arm mangled by a big cat to such an extent that it has to be amputated from the elbow down.
Turns out exotic pet owners are plenty in North America, and this is by no means a new phenomenon. Back in 2003, long before we knew about the Tiger King, there was Antoine Yates. Yates was dubbed Tiger Man by the press after police discovered that he had been keeping a 425 lb tiger as a pet in his Harlem apartment. They also discovered an alligator being kept in a tank once they gained access to the apartment.
Yates raised the tiger from a cub, and it wasn't until he got between it and a kitten he had brought into the apartment and needed to pay a visit to the hospital that suspicion was aroused. Yates tried to convince medical personnel that the damage to his leg was caused by a pitbull, but they didn't believe him. Police then placed a camera in his apartment and discovered there was indeed a fully-grown tiger living there.
In what was like something out of an action movie, police rappelled down the side of Yates' apartment building and fired a tranquilizer dart through the window to sedate the tiger. Yates went to prison for three months and was put on probation for a further five years, but told the New York Times he still believes he did nothing wrong. Ming the tiger, along with Al the alligator, was relocated to a sanctuary in Ohio where he died of natural causes in 2019.
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