Dreamworlds Tiger cubs » Dreamworld

Dreamworlds Tiger cubs
31-03-2007

Great news with Dreamworlds Sumatran Tigers giving birth to two new babies, Its a new bloodline for Australia, wow.

31-03-2007

Hey this is good news, especially as it's a new bloodline, any details on numbers and gender?

31-03-2007

They are hoping more cubs will be born over night so two so far, no details on gender yet.

31-03-2007

According to one news release, Dreamworld intends to remove the cubs from their mother at about three weeks of age and hand raise them to habituate them to human contact. Personally I really disaprove of this. The polar bear cub in Germany was rejected by their mother but this is not the case here. I would support animal rights groups in this case if they protested against it. I wish they would.

31-03-2007

That could be the case Jay, I would like to see the cubs stay with the mother for at least one year, the mother is now four years old. maybe Australia zoo could want this bloodline as i think their three Sumatrans are all litter mates?.

31-03-2007

just emailed al mucci (head life sciences) congratulated and criticised the plan abduction of the cubs- though i asked nicley whats the plans

hope for a good reply - i know him already, turns out he and my bio teacher went to uni together, what a great link to have

01-04-2007

Don't forget, that Sumatran Tigers are one of the most highly managed species in the region. It will not necessarily be up to Dreamworld (or Australia Zoo) to determine where they go. Both institutions are members of the breeding program, and have agreed to follow regional recommendations. Sadly, that doesn't stop Dreamworld from hand-raising the tigers for their presentations.

01-04-2007

I wonder if the other cubs have been born yet. Rather premature of Dreamworld to announce their birth, especially considering that Mel took a couple of months.
It will be interesting to see where they go in the end. My main concern is that hand reared cubs may have problems later on when introduces to no hand reaered cubs.

01-04-2007

Jay, If Dreamworld pull these cubs for hand-rearing, there's almost no chance of them being intriduced back to non hand-reared animals. The whole idea of Dreamworld hand-rearing them is so they have animals that can be used in their presentations.

According to the media release: "The cubs will remain with Soraya in their den until the age of two to three weeks, when Dreamworld handlers will take over the job of rearing them and teach the cubs to be accustomed to humans."

01-04-2007

The name 'Dreamworld' says it all. Any responsible zoo would not 'dream' (excuse the pun) of lifting cubs from a capable mother, specifically for the purpose of using them later in animal displays and also ruining their future inclusion in any breeding programme. Here's a case where your Animal Rights folks, so often misguided, could maybe have a positive influence and perhaps stop this happening.

01-04-2007

so essentially would be hard to bvreed with then?

01-04-2007

With each other, no. With other, normally raised unrelated animals, yes.

01-04-2007

dreamworld hasnt had any problems in the past breeding tigers, has it? taronga zoo pulls its big cat cubs from their mothers, not to be hand-raised but to become comfortable around humans. they did this with lions, tigers and snow leopards.
but if taronga can hand-rear 3 lion cubs, and then breed from them why couldnt dreamworld do the same with tigers? im talking biologically here, not ethically. in which case im not extremely agitated by it. i guess if dreamworld, with all its resources and stuff, wasnt participating in the tiger breeding program the regions zoos might be struggling to manage them so intensively. and it just occured to me that steve irwin also hand-raised sumatran tiger cubs bred at mogo for his breeding program, whats the problem?

01-04-2007

I think that handraising wil make these cubs more difficult to breed from with other, normally socialised tigers in future, though its certainly not impossible.

What I really don't like is taking them from a competent mother at such a young age, don't you think that is cruelty to her?

Handraising when its done out of necessity is a totally different thing, of course.

02-04-2007

I don't think Taronga hand reared its cubs, they played with them yes but the mothers still raised them. I am against hand rearing animals when there is no good reason for it. As far as we know Soraya, the mother, is perfectly capable of rearing her cubs herself. Dreamworld are doing this purely for show reasons, just as Steve did with his tigers. This is what I am against and a certain local animal rights group are going to hear about it.