Not sure if this has been noted in another thread but Dreamworld has announced that they have imported the largest female tiger in Australia - a 200kg Bengal from a polish zoo. She is to be paired with a male (I'm assuming either Taj, Sultan or Rama) and hopes are to have cubs ASAP. I couldn't see here age, name or specific zoo she came from but it looks as if Dreamworld will hold a naming competition for her.
there's an article here (no mention of which Polish zoo though): Dreamworld's new tiger arrives from Poland Local Gold Coast News | goldcoast.com.au | Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
hmm, interestingly enough the articles I found which said the tiger "came from Poland's Krakow Zoo" have now all changed their wording to simply "a zoo in Poland", and one article in particular (on NZ's Voxy site) appears to have actually vanished altogether. Very odd. There's a cut and paste of that article on Peter Dickinson's zoo page though which retains the Krakow reference. It should be noted also that Krakow hold pure Siberians and generic tigers, and Dreamworld's new female is one of the latter not a pure Bengal (hence her very large size, from Siberian genes).
No pure-bred Bengal tigers exist in Europe. What is their is just hopscotch zoo mix or the infamous .. grrrr ... white tigers.
on their facebook page there is a link (on June 20) to a video from the local morning chat-show which features the tiger. I can't get it to play, but the still-shot shown has a caption along the bottom saying "New Big Cat. Meet the Siberian tiger who's arrived in Australia"....? https://www.facebook.com/dreamworld Can an Australian watch that and see what the story is?
It just says how great having new genes is for their conservation programme, and that the new female is still in quarantine acclimatising to sunny Australia, which is a big change from the Siberian winters she is used to... The reporter regularly uses the word Siberian, but I don't think the staff do, and I think she is a standard hybrid tiger who is big because of her Siberian genes, and maybe that's where the idea that she's a Siberian came from. It does say that she has had two previous litters, the last one she raised succesfully.
ah, there's the Sumatran bit @Kalat, does Krakow have pure Siberians as well as hybrids (that is what I gathered from Zootierliste)?
I've read an update from October 2013 saying Dreamworld were planning to introduce her to Sultan and Rama. Has any progress been made on this, or with any other introductions? If Nika is a hybird, then any cubs she has are not going to contribute to the global breeding programme or enhance the genetics of the region etc. However I'm aware that Dreamworld raise a large amount of money for conservation, so indirectly the income from admissions to see her offspring may well prove valuable to conservation efforts.
A single tiger cub has been born at Dreamworld - here is some info that has been released by the park; Name: Unnamed / Unknown Sex: Male DOB: 25/07/2015 Origin: Dreamworld Dame: Nika - Siberian/Bengal/Hybrid - (born in Apr 2006) Imported in June 2013 from Poland. Sire: Raja - Sumatran - (born in Dec 2003) Imported in Nov 2005 from Germany. Personally i'm surprised they bred her with Raja instead of bengals Rama or Sultan.
Personally I still feel disconnected with the notion that breeding and hand-raising these hybrids will somehow improve conservation efforts. This cub has been bred for profit and nothing else IMO.
Without getting back into the old argument, it is important to point out that Dreamworld gives significantly more money to tiger conservation than any other Australasian zoo, and their programme is incredibly engaging. At least the Sumatrans are kept as part of the managed regional breeding programme, so they do contribute usefully to that as well.
The cub has been named Kai: https://au.news.yahoo.com/qld/a/29351400/dreamworld-names-cute-tiger-cub-kai/
Fair enough and I know they make significant financial contributions to tiger conservation in general. However, on the home front where this pertains to maintaining tigers there is no argument whatsoever to retain or (attempt) to breed hybrid / mutant gene tigers over maintaining and breeding the real wild article. Hence, I and a few others too will continue to be at liberty to disagree. Needless to say, it is sad that a serious conservation zoo feels the need to go to this length …, as pure-bred tiger subspecies are just as impressive, be it all the more significant as all ssp. are endangered … Out of sheer statistical interest: how many Sumatran tigers are currently held? How many have been bred in recent times? How many Sumatrans have been exchanged within the ZAA region where Dreamworld Sumatrans were involved?
