10 People Who Raised Beasts as Pets

I like pets as much as the next guy. I have a cat. I’d love to have a little beagle some day. But I don’t think that I could do what any of the 10 people on this list have been able to do. They are living with pets, sure, but their pets are huge!

Janice Haley
She’s nearly sixty, and she is living in a house with two pet tigers in her back yard. That is incredible. Even Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin only had one tiger. Janice Haley has two.
In 1995 she quit her full time job and got her first tiger. Since then, she has become famous for living with her friendly cats.

Daphne Sheldrick
Daphne Sheldrick dedicated her life to raising baby elephants. She would raise them until they were capable of going into the wild and living the rest of their lives with fellow elephants.
Daphne created the David Sheldrick Wildlife Foundation after her husband died. Over the years she has rescued over 180 orphaned baby elephants. Unfortunately she died in 2018, but because elephants never forget, I’m sure she was happy that she would always be remembered fondly by the baby elephants she saved.

John Rendall and Anthony Bourke
This is one of the most famous stories about two people raising a lion and then letting him go into the wild. It pops up on your Facebook yearly. This is the story of Christian the Lion and his two owners – Rendall and Bourke.
These guys bought the lion when their boss from their department store told them they can get any pet for the store that they want. Naturally, when your boss tells you something like this – you go and get a lion! And they did, in 1969. After the lion was grown, he was reintroduced to the African wilderness by conservationist George Adamson. A year later, when Rendall and Bourke visited him – Christian recognized them! And that video of the lion recognizing them is what pops up on Facebook every once in a while!

Wang Kaiyu
What would you do if you wanted a pet (a dog specifically)? You’d go and you’d buy two puppies. But then, what would you do if those puppies turned out to be bear cubs instead!? Wang Kaiyu had to deal with exactly this problem. He bought two puppies that turned out to be bear cubs. He raised them as dogs for three months before he realized that they were actually bears, after which he called animal services and made sure that the bears were given proper care and reintroduced into the wilderness.