A Beyonce baby tiger photo, in which the superstar and her family are seen playing with the animal at a theme park in Thailand, has caused a firestorm of controversy online.
The singer was pictured this week with Jay Z and their daughter Blue Ivy interacting with a baby tiger being bottle fed at the
Phuket FantaSea park, The Huffington Post reported.
The World Animal Protection organization decried the photo, saying tourists unwittingly contribute to suffering of wild animals by participating in such activities.
"The tigers used for these photos are often forcibly removed from their mothers to be fed artificially by tourists," the organization said on its website. "They are also crammed into tiny cages or chained to the floor for long periods. A far cry from their natural lives in the wild."
Denise Bethold posted a petition on PetitionHub.org to "send a message to Beyonce and Jay Z asking them to stop promoting animal cruelty."
"We need to be the voice of the animals and ask this A-list couple that animals need to be protected and animal cruelty should not be encouraged," the petition says.
Photos with tigers have drawn concern elsewhere recently. State legislators in New York last year passed a controversial bill banning people from posing for photos while hugging, patting, or otherwise
touching tigers in the state, the New York Post reported.
Twitter users weighed in on the issue.