The foals were born to two separate mothers.Continue reading
Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) twins were born in the Nyíregyháza Zoo (northeastern Hungary). One of the world’s rarest tiger species has been bred in a European partnership, as a result of ten years of planned breeding work, the zoo’s director announced on Tuesday.
László Gajdos recalled that the park had been trying to find the “ideal tiger couple” for breeding since 2015, and females arrived from several European zoos. There have been miscarriages and stillbirths before, but now healthy twins have been born from the union of a male named Gio, born in 2010, and four-year-old Sabah.
The male cubs, now four weeks old, underwent their first medical examination on Tuesday after the end of the quarantine period,”
said the director. He said that in addition to a general health check, the veterinary team gave the animals a unique identification, and the cubs, weighing 5 and 4.6 kilograms respectively, received their first vaccine and worming treatments.
Photo: MTI/Balázs Attila
The director noted that the breeding is also special because the
Sumatran is not only one of the rarest tiger sub-species in the world, but also one of the rarest animals in the world.
The giant panda, for instance, has a wild population of between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals, while there are only 400-500 of this species of tiger in the world.
Of the six tiger species, the Sumatran tiger is the smallest and lives in the most southern regions. In the wild, they are found only in the low-lying areas and mountain forests of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They hunt solitarily, preying mainly on medium-sized herbivores.
They have become critically endangered due to habitat destruction and poaching. In the 1970s, the number of animals in the wild was put at around 1,000, and in 1996, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated the number of Sumatran tigers at around 250. There are 280 of them in zoos around the world, including four in Nyíregyháza Zoo.
From this weekend, the tiger cubs can be seen by the public in the Nyíregyháza Zoo’s endangered animal exhibit in the Viktória House.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Balázs Attila