Death of celebrity tiger sparks old memories

Esso's Tango, like the chimps used by PG Tips, raise questions over treatment of wild animals

British media reported the sad news recently that Tango, a male tiger, has died at the age of 22 at a wildlife park in Britain.

That's relatively old for a tiger. Tango had lived a varied life, even by big cat standards.

So why am I writing the ultimate cat story? Well, Tango was part of my youth, starring in a wildly successful series of ads for Esso, a brand of automobile fuel, which carried the slogan "Put a tiger in your tank" and featured photographs of Tango bounding toward the camera.

Not content with using Tango as the main force behind the advertising campaign, the marketing department of Esso went one stage further: Buy a certain amount of fuel and you got a free synthetic tiger tail to tie to your car aerial. Very cutting-edge.

After his days as an advertising star were done, as is often the case in the world of celebrity, Tango and his mate, Julia, fell on hard times.

They were sold to a German circus, which according to media reports treated them abominably. They somehow ended up in Belgium, where they faced being euthanized, but Woodside Wildlife Park in Lincoln, eastern England, stepped in and raised the 250,000 pounds ($333,000; 296,000 euros) needed to bring them to safety.

That was in 2014, and Tango and Julia lived out their lives in comparative comfort. I say comparative, because I am uneasy about such majestic animals being kept in captivity, even in a wildlife park with acres of space.

Tigers usually die at about age 16, although the oldest known tiger died at 24.

That brings to mind another famous group of animals that found stardom in the world of advertising.

PG Tips is a brand of tea most Britons are familiar with, and in the 1970s its TV ads featured a family of chimpanzees dressed in human clothes, holding a tea party, albeit a messy one. The animals were trained and looked after by Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire.

Twycross eventually reversed its policy of providing animals in such circumstances, and the chimpanzees were "retired" and continued to live at the zoo.

The last of them, Choppers, died this year at the ripe old age of 48, and her story is perhaps an example of how attitudes toward animals in captivity have changed. She'd been rescued as a baby by an English couple in Liberia after being captured by poachers.

After her "retirement" from dressing up in human clothes and playing with teacups, Choppers had difficulty in adapting to life as a chimpanzee, and only after her partner, Louis, died, was she reintroduced to the zoo's family of chimpanzees.

There, finally, she learned how to integrate with fellow chimpanzees, grooming other apes and even acting as a peacemaker when family squabbles broke out.

So is it OK to try and integrate wild animals into everyday human life? Are zoos the answer?

I remember as a child being upset at the sight of lions and tigers being kept in cages at the zoo, as they paced up and down, obviously pining for wide-open spaces. Don't even get me started on lions in the circus.

Now, thankfully, things have changed. No more small cages, and no more circus acts.

On the tiger front, I believe on balance that to protect the species from poachers and traditional medicine practitioners, there is little choice than keeping them on game reserves.

And it's not just poachers in China and India - big cats and other large animals are at risk, particularly in Africa, from amateur big-game hunters, mainly from the US. It disgusts me to this day.

So, RIP Tango. I've still got a tattered old tiger's tail somewhere. It's just that my cars no longer have an aerial to hang it on.

The author is managing editor of China Daily Europe Bureau. Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 09/16/2016 page12)