Thailand’s Lion Boom Exposes Social Media’s Dark Side on Wildlife
The dissonance rings like a broken bell. We live in the age of climate reckoning, a sixth mass extinction, and a creeping, collective guilt over humanity’s footprint. Yet, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a man films his pet lions, “Big George” the liger among them, and a legion of followers showers him with likes. The Bangkok Post details a bizarre reality: lion ownership isn’t just legal; it’s booming, fueled by social media and a deep-seated human impulse to exert dominion over the wild.
This isn’t just a Thai curiosity; it’s a concentrated dose of a global ailment: the attention economy’s grotesque incentives. The algorithm rewards the extreme, the novel, the shocking, often at the direct expense of species and habitats. And the perverse incentive is not limited to Thailand. One can observe similar trends in the United Arab Emirates, where the ownership of big cats is considered a status symbol among the wealthy, or even in parts of the United States, where exotic animal ownership laws, despite regulations, allow for the existence of private zoos and menageries.
The Thai situation exposes the cracks in the facade. Regulations are porous. Native tiger births are tracked with urgency; lion births are granted a 60-day grace period, a chasm in which exploitation thrives.
“It’s absolute madness,” said Tom Taylor, chief operating officer of conservation group Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand. “It’s terrifying to imagine, if the laws aren’t changed, what the situation is going to be in 10 years.”
The policy reflects a profound disconnect. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, offers a framework, but on the ground, a different story unfolds. Lions “lost to follow-up,” animals vanishing, whispers of cross-border smuggling — these are not exceptions; they are symptoms of a system designed to fail. The issue is not merely the regulations themselves but the lack of resources and political will to enforce them stringently, compounded by deeply entrenched corruption that allows the illegal wildlife trade to flourish.
Thailand’s history provides context. From elephant rides to the infamous tiger temple scandal, the country has long balanced conservation against tourism revenue. While global sentiment has evolved, local practices die hard. The past is a prologue, but it’s also a current, shaping the possibilities of the present.
Beyond greed lies a cultural narrative. These aren’t merely pets; they’re trophies, badges of affluence broadcast to the world. The influencer isn’t just sharing content; they’re performing a self-image, crafting a narrative of mastery. This is commodification not just of animals, but of untamed nature itself.
Consider the colonial-era menageries. The British Empire, the French, the Spanish — they all showcased exotic animals as symbols of their global reach, their power to extract resources and control distant lands. As historian Harriet Ritvo detailed in The Animal Estate, the acquisition and display of these animals served as a powerful visual representation of imperial dominance. Today’s social media echoes that impulse, amplified and democratized, but no less potent. As Mary Douglas argued in “Purity and Danger,” societies use animals to define boundaries, to create order. Lion ownership, in this context, isn’t just a personal quirk; it’s a social statement about hierarchy and control.
What then, is the path forward? It begins with rejecting the premise that nature exists for our amusement or profit. We must acknowledge the intrinsic value of these creatures, their inherent right to exist, independent of our whims. This demands more than regulations; it demands a cultural reckoning, a rethinking of our relationship with the wild. It requires challenging not only the supply side of this trade, with stricter enforcement and international cooperation, but also addressing the demand side, dismantling the cultural narratives that glorify exotic animal ownership. And critically, it means acknowledging the uncomfortable truth that our own consumption patterns, our own participation in the attention economy, however indirectly, contributes to the forces that fuel this exploitation. Because ultimately, the fate of these lions is a reflection of our own choices, our own values, and our own capacity for empathy.
