It sounds like they thought it had something wrong with it earlier. It had a head tilt and they could not find why. Lucky it was not the female.
it just goes to show how important the new tigers that Australia zoo has just brought in are to the regional populations. it sounds harsh but at least they still have one male and the female to carry on the blood lines.
what im going to say will sound harsh as well. 3 sumatran tigers are obviously better than 2, but with, as Toria pointed out 2 cubs left to represent the new bloodline of Binja so the loss of this cub isnt sooooooooo bad. from the point of view of housing the cubs in the future, it just got a bit easier, and may just help to speed up the process of integrating the new Australia Zoo cubs into the breeding program by creating a new (or potential) space. this is the second litter of cubs born recently, the other being Tarongas, to suffer from certain defects early on in life. whether this is a manifestation of inbreeding is debatable, but certainly the 3 new Indonesian cubs and the infusion of new genes they bring are a huge asset for this program.
I rewrote my original post before I posted it as I thought it sounded a bit harsh. If there was something wrong with it I am glad it died now as resourses would have been used to keep it alive which would be better for the species elsewhere, and they have suficent males already. Imagine how much negative publicity the greens could have got claiming that this poor handicapped tiger was being neglected by the zoo if it had survived.
Sad to see the death of this young tiger. I only hope that Mel. Zoo is in no way culpable for the death. It would be too much if it was a result of some sort of neglect. It's also interesting that the fathers of these two litters that had problems when young are brothers.
i doubt it. not if its due to a drowning in the moat. it is designed for the tigers to swim in. sounds odd to me, like this animal may have had some neurological issues or something...
Hi guys When the three cubs were born they ALL had a bit of head tilt and they all grew out of it. The vets/keepers liaised with other organisations and found that there were similar occurances of tiger cubs born with head tilts and they grew stronger the tilt disappeard. There was nothing wrong with Nakal or the other cubs. it is really devastating (room or no room) to lose a healthy young animal and the keepers, having watched them grow and care for them would be really feeling this. The clue may lie with members of the public who were obviously viewing the enclosure and the moat in question is in full view of the public and there are always people at the tigers....someone must have observed something.
hmmmmmm......its kinda weird. you wouldn't expect a tiger to drown. i'm thinking was it possible they were playfighting and anothercat acccidently drowned its sibling? melbourne has had some bad luck with water moats. siamangs, mandrills and now tigers..
No. It is unusual. The reason the moat is in there is because tigers do like to use it and past animals have taken a dip (and the cubs have used the moat before as well). Hopefully, the autopsy will give a few more clues. He may have hit his head and fallen in.
the latest article on the tradgedy says that the cubs may have been chasing some birds at the time so purhaps he was running after the bird and slipped on a lose rock and fell into the pool.. but again that doesnt really make sense becuase they can swim... it also says that there were no witnesses Birds may have played role in tiger death - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
I just cannot believe with the popularity of this enclosure that nobody saw anything! Actually...it just made me think of some friends of mine who lost their cat in January. He was chasing a moth and jumped over some outdoor furniture and hit his head on a deck chair and fell on the ground dead. (It was a terrible tragedy.) It was really hard to comprehend, as is this whole deal.
So far no one is accusing the zoo of some sort of negligence, I'm waiting for Lee Rhiannon to come out and make some sort of accusation.
I'd guess if this cub had physical issues it might have something to do with the blood lines... Patrick knows the stats about how many original Sumatrans reared the current 140 in zoos, something like 14 wasn't it..?
It appears that the death was nothing more than a tragic accident. An autopsy was unable to find any evidence of trauma such as heart attack etc. Safety move led to cub's death - National - theage.com.au
