Dreamworld Dreamworlds Tiger cubs

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

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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?.

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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."

 

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.

 

so essentially would be hard to bvreed with then?

 

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

 

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?

 

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.

 

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.

 

as i said in my thread, taronga doesnt hand rear its cubs, but does pull them for short times so that as they grow the cubs are comfortable and relaxed around their keepers.
however, the lions were hand-raised, they came from mogo...i think in most cases animals should be parent reared, particularly in zoos but dreamworld, is by nature a commercial operation who keeps tigers both for conservation reasons and for commercial reasons. the two ar einterchangeable in this case, and if dreamworld is to meet its obligations of breeding these animals then it seems they have to hand-raise them. unless they are hand-raised, no tiger island. no tiger island, fewer tigers in the regional breeding program.
they do donate money to in-situ money, and they have white tigers too. white tigers and hand-raising cubs are both grey areas that zoos should stray from, but a commercial operation like dreamworld can get into it i guess. its a case of ethics really. and as th manager of tiger island said this morning, the mother wouldnt be too distressed by the cubs removal, as these animals naturally lose many cubs in the wild.

 

I really cannot see any good reason for removing the cubs for hand rearing.
Dreamworld already has several (4?) tigers already handraised and in their show it really doesn't need more. Especially as the sumatrans won't be able to be mixed with the existing tigers because of their size difference.

 

sorry guys, had a responce from dream wolrd which i had posted, they than read the post and said very disapointed its was posted publically, there was nothing wrong with the emails, just not happy to have them posted

they stand buy taking the cubs of mothers for enrichment purposes

 

someone said that dreamworld have plenty of tiogers for interactive display and don't need anymore - it was my impression that the bengal hybrids kept at dreamworld (white or otherwise) are in the process of being phased out and replaced with sumatrans so as to be involved in the australiasian program. i imagine that many of the bengal hybrids on "tiger island" are getting fairly old now.

as for keeping bengals and sumatrans seperate - does australia zoo do this? i thought they did.

in any event "tiger island" is just a commercial endevour. unless the tigers are hand-raised there would be no "tiger island". dreamworld is not a zoo, its a theme park.

so whilst i personally am not too fond of the hand-rearing thing, good luck convincing australia zoo or dreamworld to stop - because they won't!

 

Bah

Hand raised cubs breed fine. Bruiser... aka Jambo.. along with his siters (now at dubbo) were all born at Mogo and Hand raised at Taronga... Sri Racha Tiger Zoo has no problems breeding their hand raised tigers with imported, non humanised cats. Dreamworld and all other zoos insist that the cats always maintain their basic insticts (I know for a fact mohan has taken down a peacock and a few ibis) and mating is just one of these basic natural instincts. If anything it could and I believe does in some cases make it easier for breeding. Take Leon and Sammara, the snow leopards. Neither hand raised. were interacted but in nsw the law only allows up to 20 kgs before the keepers can't enter, During the attempts leon was more nervous around sammara while the keeperes were there. Dreamworld is an Educational facility and the studbook manager knew that when sending them there. They do a very good job, better than most at educating the public so yeah I don't see a problem with what I do... slightly biased maybe as habve just applied for the job to help care for those cubs... lol