About Siegfried and Roy

Sad Life for Gildah the Elephant
Siegfried & Roy’s 63 lions and tigers aren’t the only animals that the duo keeps in a deprived environment. For Gildah, Siegfried & Roy’s solitary wild-caught elephant who lives at the Mirage Casino, isolation is the bitter reality of daily life. Fifty-five-year-old Gildah is deprived of a female elephant’s most basic need, the companionship of other elephants. Siegfried & Roy have ignored PETA’s pleas to greatly enrich Gildah’s life by making the compassionate decision to send her to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, where she could forage through hundreds of acres of lush vegetation, play in the pond, experience the tender caress of another’s trunk, and engage in a magnificent chorus of trumpets, barks, and soft rumbles with other elephants.

Training
According to an August 2000 Esquire article that featured a Siegfried & Roy interview, Roy was quoted as saying, “Women and tigers are exactly alike. They have the same temperament, emotions, and vulnerabilities. They must be spoken to softly—but it doesn’t hurt to carry a big stick just in case.”

Conservation Con
It’s one thing to perform magic tricks to fool people, but Siegfried & Roy have fooled people for years into believing that they breed white tigers for the sake of conservation, when in fact white tigers are not endangered—they’re not even considered a species. White tigers are simply an aberrant color variation of Bengal tigers. Recessive genes produce white fur, chocolate stripes, blue eyes, and a pink nose. White tigers appear occasionally in the wild but are at a distinct disadvantage because they lack the camouflage necessary to ensure survival. All captive white tigers are inbred, which has led to serious congenital defects, including cataracts, club feet, and near-crippling hip dysplasia. Breeding white tigers serves no conservation purpose and is done solely for its amusement and profit value. While normal tigers are sold for around $500, white tigers can be sold for between $25,000 and $100,000 each.

The entertainment industry, through acts such as Feld Entertainment’s Siegfried & Roy, tries to legitimize casino acts and carnival sideshows with breeding programs for the “nearly extinct white tiger,” when in fact it is propagating genetic freaks. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s Tiger Species Survival Plan condemns the breeding of white tigers.

Animal Welfare Act Noncompliances
A 1999 USDA inspection report documented that Siegfried & Roy were cited for veterinary care noncompliances for having two containers of pills that failed to have labels indicating their contents, use, and expiration dates and for failure to have records of acquisition and disposition. The USDA inspector also noted, “A separate inspection report prepared for [the Mirage Hotel] addresses the lack of a public barrier in one area, and standing water in the aisle of the front tiger habitat.”

Other Mishaps
The October 3, 2003, incident in which Roy Horn was attacked was not the first involving Siegfried & Roy’s tigers.

• According to KLAS-TV news in Las Vegas, a former Mirage employee reported that “in 2000, the tigers chewed through the fence at the Secret Garden and security guards used emergency procedures to get ahold of the tigers before animal handlers stepped in. This was apparently minutes before the Secret Garden opened to the public.”
• In 1985, a man named Chuck Flannery, who was working on the big-cat compound, was left paralyzed with brain and spinal-cord injuries when one of Siegfried & Roy’s captive tigers lunged at him and grabbed his neck.
• In a 1997 attack that occurred before horrified tourists at Siegfried & Roy’s compound, a male tiger grabbed a female tiger by the throat and slowly choked her to death. According to a tourist who witnessed the incident, the male tiger had a stranglehold on the female’s neck for at least 20 minutes, and “nobody did anything ... no animal trainer was on hand” to intervene.

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