Home » Latest » Celebrity » Controversial Pets Stars Gave Away

Controversial Pets Stars Gave Away

11

InfoSearched 30 0 Celebrity

9.1

SaveSavedRemoved 3

Justin Bieber flew a monkey into Germany without paperwork, and Munich customs made sure he never got it back.

Celebrity pet ownership has a way of going sideways fast when the animal in question isn’t a golden retriever. Nicki Swift’s rundown of “Controversial Pets Stars Gave Away” digs into the exotic-animal cases that ended in seizures, surrenders, and six-figure vet bills — Justin Bieber’s capuchin monkey, Tyga’s illegal tiger cub, Mike Tyson’s Bengal tigers, and Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee Bubbles among them. Each case follows the same arc: fame and money buy access to an animal no ordinary household could legally or safely keep, and reality eventually catches up.

• German customs seized Justin Bieber’s capuchin monkey, OG Mally, at the Munich airport in 2013 after he arrived without vaccination records or import documentation; he missed the legal deadline to claim the animal and was ordered to pay thousands in shelter and care fees.
• Rapper Tyga surrendered an illegal tiger cub he’d been keeping at his California home to a private rescue sanctuary once the California Department of Fish and Wildlife intervened, and he later faced criminal charges.
• Mike Tyson gave away all three Bengal tigers he housed at his Las Vegas estate after one of them severely injured a trespassing woman, a moment he later pointed to as proof of how dangerous the animals actually were.

Mally’s Munich Layover

Bieber landed in Munich mid-tour in 2013 with his pet capuchin monkey in tow, but he hadn’t secured the vaccination records or import paperwork Germany requires for bringing an exotic primate across its border. Customs officials at the airport seized Mally on the spot and placed him in quarantine while Bieber’s team scrambled. The scramble didn’t work — Bieber never produced the documentation and let the legal deadline to reclaim the monkey pass, which under German law amounted to surrendering him to the government.

Mally didn’t go back into private hands. He was relocated permanently to the Serengeti Wildlife Park in Hodenhagen, Germany, where he’s lived as part of the park’s collection ever since. Bieber, for his part, was billed for the cost of the monkey’s shelter and care during the whole ordeal, a tab that ran into the thousands of dollars. It’s the kind of episode that’s popped up alongside other controversial celeb moments that stuck around in the public memory long after the story broke.

Tyga’s Tiger Cub Problem

Tyga’s case followed a more familiar pattern for California: buy an exotic animal, get flagged by wildlife regulators, hand it over before things escalate. The rapper had been keeping a tiger cub at his home until the California Department of Fish and Wildlife stepped in and forced the surrender. He handed the cub off to a private rescue sanctuary, but the intervention didn’t end there — Tyga went on to face criminal charges tied to owning the animal illegally in the first place, the kind of legal fallout that’s landed other stars in the same territory covered in pieces on celebrity prison sentences.

Mike Tyson’s Bengal Tigers

Tyson’s tiger phase is the most infamous in the bunch. He kept three full-grown Bengal tigers at his Las Vegas estate at one point, treating them almost like guard animals as much as pets. That changed once one of the tigers mauled a woman who trespassed onto the property, an attack severe enough to make Tyson reconsider the whole arrangement.

Tyson later acknowledged the danger directly, pointing to the mauling as the moment he realized the tigers were a liability he couldn’t manage — and gave all three away.

It’s a rare instance of a celebrity animal story ending with the owner admitting the risk out loud rather than getting caught by regulators first.

Bubbles and the Long History of Celebrity Exotics

Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee Bubbles is the granddaddy of this whole category. Bubbles lived alongside Jackson for years as a genuine companion, but chimps don’t stay small, and their strength and unpredictability only grow with age. Once Bubbles aged out of what a private home could safely handle, he was transferred to the Center for Great Apes in Florida, where he’s been cared for since. The Bieber, Tyga, and Tyson cases are essentially modern variations on the same problem Jackson ran into decades earlier — exotic animals don’t stay novelty-sized, and eventually someone with actual jurisdiction steps in.

Bieber, for what it’s worth, never got Mally back. The monkey’s still at the Serengeti Wildlife Park in Hodenhagen, and the shelter bill Bieber paid to close the case remains one of the stranger line items in any pop star’s ledger.