Busch Gardens Tampa: Tiger Insider Tour

Tampa, Florida: In the heart of Jungala, you can get up close to Busch Gardens streak of Tigers. The park is home to nine tigers total. In the wild, tigers are solitary but here the separate habitats in Jungala allow them to display more than one tiger at a time. If you want to get even closer to the tigers and learn a little more about them, Busch Gardens offers a Tiger Insider Tour.

Today we decided to embark on the insider tour to learn a little more about the Tigers that call Busch Gardens home.  When we got into the park, we headed over to the Adventure Outpost and booked a spot on the 1:30 tour.  We headed over to Jungala a little early and were greeted by a playful Bhutan who was splashing around in the river.

They ask for you to check in for the tour about 15 minutes early in the Tiger Lodge.  Once the entire group was assembled and the keeper staff was ready, we were lead to the Tiger House.  The Tiger House was located beneath the walk-ways of Jungala.  Who would have ever known that every time we walk down the sidewalk of Jungala, we were actually walking over the homes of the Tigers.  In fact to put it into the perspective, the Tiger Lodge and Tiger Trail are located on the second level of the Tiger House.

Once inside the secured area, we were greeted by our guide Tyler who would be our escort on the tour as we began to learn about the Tigers here at Busch Gardens.  The first tiger we met was Bundar, a 6 year old Malayan Tiger.  We learned about the Species Survival Program in which Bundar and Busch Gardens participate in as an effort to reproduce these great cats without risking genetic mutations by continuing to breed within the same groups.  We then had an opportunity to watch one of the keepers, Emily, work with Bundar and demonstrate how they mix training and husbandry together to keep the big cats health.

From there we went inside and got a look at the food preparation for the tigers here at Busch Gardens.  We learned about the Toronto meat the tigers love to eat, a mixture of ground horse and bones.  We also got to see a tray of rabbits the tigers get to eat as enrichment and learned that the tigers do not like to eat the intestines so rather then have them rot in the hot Florida sun, the keepers remove the intestinal tract from the rabbits in advance.

Next we got to see the series of suites and chute system that house the tigers and move them throughout the Tiger House and the exhibits.  In the chute, there is a section in which the keepers can perform a medical evaluation.  The keepers rely on their relationship with the tiger to perform a voluntary assessment of the tiger.  This allows them to monitor the health of each of the tigers without the stress of anesthesia.

Then we met the second tiger on the tour, Rukayah.  Rukayah is the twin brother of Bundar who we met earlier.  We got to watch Emily work another husbandry session with Rukayah.  It is amazing to see how smart and playful these big cats are.  After the session with Rukayah was over, our tour was over.  We were led to a stair that took us back to the common area of the park near the exit to Tiger Trail. 

The Tiger Insider Tour was a great way to get an inside look at how Busch Gardens cares for their tigers.  I really enjoyed the behind the scenes look and getting to see the keepers work with the tigers up close.  You can watch it on tv all the time but nothing beats seeing it in person.  We enjoyed the tour so much, we booked the cheetah tour in two weeks.

If you want to get up close to these amazing cats, book a tour on your next visit.  You can book online or in person at the park.  The Tiger Insider Tour costs $29.99 a person.

I will be adding more photos from the tour and our visit today to my Busch Gardens photo gallery in  the coming days.  Click on the photos above to visit the gallery or follow me on Facebook to be notified every time photos are added to the site. 

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