A feast of three tigers has landed a Chinese businessman in prison, state media reported on Tuesday.
Identified only by his surname Xu, the wealthy real estate developer was sentenced to 13 years in prison on Tuesday and fined $25,000 for entertaining "a special hobby of grilling tiger bones, boning tiger paws, storing tiger penis, eating tiger meat and drinking tiger blood alcohol," the official Xinhua news agency had said in June when he went on trial.
Last year, a total of 15 people, including Xu, made three separate trips to Leizhou in the southern province of Guangdong, where three tigers were purchased for a "huge amount of money" and then killed and dismembered in front of them, according to the government-run news portal gxnews.com.cn.
The entire dismembering process of the tiger was filmed by someone and then later obtained by police, Al-Jazeera reported.
Upon further investigation, authorities discovered eight pieces of animal meat and bones from a refrigerator in Xu's home, some of which were later identified as tiger parts, including a penis, the report said, adding that 16 geckos and a cobra were also found.
Earlier this year, all 15 people were convicted by a court in Guangxi for "illegally transporting precious and endangered wild animal products."
While 14 of them were jailed for terms between five and six and a half years, Xu was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined 1.55 million yuan ($25,000), gxnews.com.cn reported.
On Monday, they appealed and a higher court upheld the ruling.
Although there is a long-held belief across parts of Asia that penises of animals such as tigers and seals can boost men's sexual performance, there is no orthodox scientific evidence for such claims.
"Tiger bones have long been an ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine, supposedly for a capacity to strengthen the human body, and while they have been removed from its official ingredient list, the belief persists among some," Agence France-Presse reported.
Meanwhile, the tiger population has reportedly been slashed from 100,000 a century ago to approximately 3,000 because of decades of trafficking and habitat destruction, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species, where the tiger is listed as endangered.
