German police have told an employee of a Russian circus group that he can take his tigers for walks as long as the authorities are notified in advance.
The 30-year-old man caused a stir in the northern German village of Ratzeburg on Sunday when a woman called police to report a man walking a tiger cub outside of town.
The man, who is from a nearby village, works for a Russian circus group that is now on a break in the Netherlands and was charged with looking after three grown tigers and a cub.
Source
Displayed for the first time in a specially constructed studio in South Carolina,
The Four Faces of the Bengal Tiger show the four varieties of Bengal tiger.
"There are only four distinct types of Bengal tiger in the world and they are all in this amazing photo shoot," says Dr Bhagavan Antle of The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S), who brought these majestic animals to the studio.
Dr Antle believes the images give away the characteristics of behaviour, age and personality of each tiger. "Like human photographs, you can see the difference in their age as some of them look a little more grizzled and haggard than others."
See all 18 photosPhotograph: Barry Bland/Barcroft Media
"
Syamakantha Fighting a Tiger (detail), 19th century, Calcutta"
Of Gods and Mortals Exhibit from the Peabody Essex Museum
In India, art is an integral part of daily life. The importance of paintings, sculpture, textiles and other art forms comprises two basic categories, one related to religious practices and the other to the expression of prestige and social position. This new installation of works from the Peabody Essex Museum’s collection of Indian art will feature approximately 28 pieces, principally representing the 1800’s to the present.
In Texas, where you can own a pet tiger, the booming exotic animal trade has grim consequences.
A very disturbing report by Melissa Del Bosque in
the Texas Observer tells about the exotic animal trade which is a billion-dollar industry in Texas.
“It probably has the largest population of tigers in the country,” says Richard Farinato, a senior adviser with the Humane Society of the United States, “because there are a lot of animal breeders and a lot of animal dealers.”
Breeding can be lucrative. White tiger cubs sell for $5,000 each. Since tigers can have two litters a year of eight cubs, a breeder can earn $80,000 a year. Many of these white tiger cubs are sold to small businesses that travel around the country displaying them as props and charging tourists to take pictures with them.
A cleaner at the Singapore Zoo who jumped into the white tiger enclosure yesterday was killed by the animals as a horrified crowd looked on helplessly.
Malaysian Nordin Montong, 32, was set upon by two of the three big cats in the enclosure at around noon.
His colleagues later told zoo staff that the contract worker, who had been working at the zoo for about 41/2 months, had been behaving strangely minutes before the incident.
Source:
Straits Times
It has been four years since the pitter-patter of tiny paws were heard at
Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden but the sound is back, multiplied by five.
In June, a litter of tiger cubs -- Svengali, the only boy, and his four sisters, Cosmo, Chakra, Star and Celestial -- were brought in when they were 5 weeks old from a Florida breeding program to help strengthen the garden's tiger bloodlines.
Even though Siegfried & Roy haven't performed since Roy Horn was seriously injured after being bitten by a tiger onstage during a performance in 2003, they have continued with their breeding program and The Mirage attraction. The new tiger blood is needed to diversify the gene pool because the last cubs born were the Secret Garden's fourth generation of tigers.
Forty-three big cats live at the Secret Garden, including white lions, white tigers and leopards. None of the tigers born at the Secret Garden have ever left. During 25 years, 18 litters of tiger cubs have been born at an average size of three cubs per birth.
Source:
Las Vegas Review Journal
Photo credit: Berthold Stadler / AFP
The Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Monastery in Thailand is home to a family of tigers raised by a monk and living alongside human visitors. Villagers brought the first tiger cub to the monastery in 1999 after poachers killed its mother.
There are around 40 tigers in the temple which is a wildlife sanctuary where tourists can touch resting tigers.
Source:
Telegraph(via
MonkeyFilter)
A dog at a southeast Kansas zoo has adopted three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother. Safari Zoological Park owner Tom Harvey said the tiger cubs were born Sunday, but the mother had problems with them.
A day later, the mother stopped caring for them. The cubs were wandering around, trying to find their birth mother, who wouldn't pay attention to them. That's when the cubs were put in the care of Isabella, a golden retriever.
Source:
Yahoo News
A tiger cub born on Mother's Day at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium is not getting much TLC from its mother.
Tiger-keepers are working around the clock to find out why the cub's mother, Toma, isn't being receptive to her newborn.
Zoo officials think Toma might be sick or possibly carrying another cub.
The two-pound cub is being kept at an animal hospital. If the cub does not receive attention from its mother, it can be raised successfully by tiger-keepers at the zoo.
Source:
KDKA
Between 1907 and 1938, Jim Corbett killed a dozen large cats who were collectively blamed for more than 1,500 human deaths. While being hailed as India's most celebrated hunter of man-eaters, Corbett developed a vast respect for tigers and leopards. Years spent stalking intelligent and powerful predators through the forests convinced him that these were graceful creatures that deserved respect. Even these man-eaters held his respect, for he understood that they were merely adapting to their desperate circumstances. "The stress of circumstances is, in nine cases out of ten, wounds, and in the tenth case old age," Corbett once wrote, "Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to survive, they are compelled to take to a diet of human flesh." Indeed, Corbett admired the wild tiger as "a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage", and he urged India's people to rally for the conservation of "the finest of her fauna."
Read the rest of this fascinating biography at
Damn Interesting.
Found at the always excellent
Biomes Blog
Honolulu Zoo officials are taking another look at procedures for keeping their 245-pound Sumatra tiger, Berani, in his cage.
The tiger was wandering around an unsecured area just before the zoo's opening on Thursday. A startled female volunteer reported the escape after the tiger brushed past her. The volunteer quickly retreated and secured a second gate that kept the tiger from going into a public area.
Zoo officials say the tiger was loose for about five minutes in an area with only a 4-foot fence that it could have jumped over to roam the zoo.
After Berani was contained in the holding area, it took about 15 to 20 minutes to coax him into one of the feeding rooms with a meatball. The brief escape was resolved before the zoo opened to the public at 9 a.m.
Source:
Honolulu Star Bulletin
The
Times Online reports that Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire allows customers to stroke with their fingers Rocky, a nine-year-old Siberian and Bengal tiger cross described as a “gentleman”. The park also permits customers to feed Narnia, a white tiger. Meat is held up to the bars so it can be pulled into the cage.
On their website,
Paradise Wildlife Park clarifies: You actually get to
spend the whole day "with Big Cat Keepers and discover just how much fun you can have looking after Lions, Tigers, Cheetahs, Jaguars and Snow Leopards. Assist the keepers and really get your hands dirty cleaning out enclosures and preparing food; something that is definitely not for the squeamish! After you have spent the morning pampering our felines you will hand feed one of our Big Cats, a truly memorable experience not to be missed. "
Wait, there's more. At Paradise Wildlife Park you can also handle a variety of non-venomous snakes, lizards and a tarantula spider ... or enter the lemur enclosure at feeding time ... or meet the meerkats and become a human climbing frame.
Sounds like fun!
This 50-pound female retriever mix darted inside a service entrance to the Memphis Zoo and led workers on a brief chase before it bolted over a 4-foot-high visitors railing and a retaining wall at the tiger exhibit.
She swam across a 12-foot-wide moat to the interior of the exhibit and was quickly attacked by a 225-pound female Sumatran tiger.
Zoo workers used fireworks and air horns to distract the two tigers in the exhibit and get them into their night enclosures behind the exhibit viewing area.
After emergency treatment by zoo veterinarians, the dog was taken to the Animal Emergency Medical Center in Memphis where she was reported in good condition Wednesday.
MSNBC
A tiger escaped its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo, killing one visitor and mauling two others on Christmas.
Zoo officials were still uncertain how long the Siberian tiger, the same one that mauled a zoo keeper almost one year earlier, had been loose before being killed by police.
The attack occurred just after the 5 p.m. closing time, on the east end of the 125-acre grounds.
The zoo's director of animal care and conservation, Robert Jenkins, could not explain how Tatiana escaped. The tiger's enclosure is surrounded by a 15-foot-wide moat and 20-foot-high walls, and the approximately 300-pound female did not leave through an open door, he said.
"There was no way out through the door," Jenkins said. "The animal appears to have climbed or otherwise leaped out of the enclosure."
