A federal zoo inspector is scheduled to visit Brookfield Zoo to investigate a bloody incident in an animal holding area last week in which a 4-month-old tiger cub lost his right foreleg and both he and a twin sister lost much of their tails (the date of the scheduled visit by the federal zoo inspector as published has been corrected here and in a subsequent reference in this text).
More Top Picks Best Laptops For Students Under 500
Though nobody witnessed the incident Thursday morning, zoo officials said the male cub’s father apparently bit off the leg when the cub extended his right front paw between the bars of a gate separating the two. The cubs’ frantic mother then apparently chomped on the tails of both cubs to try to drag them out of reach of the gate, biting off large sections.
Though severe, the injuries are not life-threatening, and the recovering cubs are being treated at the zoo hospital. They will be returned to their mother’s care once veterinarians give the OK, a zoo official said Monday.
The animals are Amur tigers, the biggest cats in the world and an extremely endangered species.
Kenneth Kirstein, the regional veterinary medical officer from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was scheduled to visit the zoo Monday afternoon to investigate the incident and study the zoo’s procedures to check for violations of federal animal safety statutes. Kirstein was not able to come Monday and rescheduled his visit for later in the week, zoo officials said. The zoo also is conducting its own investigation.
The maiming of the cubs occurred about 8:15 a.m. in an indoor holding area behind the public tiger exhibit, said Kim Smith, Brookfield’s vice president for animal care.
“The keepers were in the area, but they didn’t see the actual incident,” Smith said.
After hearing a commotion from the animals, they ran to where the tigers were. By the time they arrived, the mother had pulled the cubs out of reach of the father.
The 13-year-old male, Robeki (pronounced ROE-kee), fathered the cubs with his mate, 12-year-old Tiara, but they are a tiger family in name only. In the wild, Amur tigers live solitary lives, getting together only to mate. Males don’t participate in rearing and protecting their young, which are cared for in isolation by the mothers.
When the zoo confirmed Tiara was pregnant early this year, Smith said Tiara and Robeki were put in separate but adjoining habitats, where they remained after the birth of the cubs, still unnamed, on May 25.
At one contact point, however, they were separated only by a barred gate. Smith said zoo staff members now surmise the male cub stuck his paw between two bars and his father was able to bite down, severing it just below the elbow. Seeing what was happening, the mother apparently bit the cubs’ tails to drag them from the gate.
“About a quarter of his tail was missing,” Smith said. “She lost three-quarters of her tail.”
Last year, in March, a Mexican gray wolf in a back holding area also lost a leg in mysterious circumstances. Keepers found the wolf hobbling on three legs one morning but could not find the severed portion.
Both the zoo and the USDA launched investigations, surmising that the wolf may have gotten its leg caught in a fence, breaking it so severely that the wolf or another animal chewed it off. The wolf recovered and is now living in a wildlife rehabilitation center in Arizona.
The zoo subsequently redesigned its wolf exhibit fencing. Jessica Milteer, a USDA spokeswoman, said her agency found no “indication that anything happened at the zoo that was in violation of animal welfare regulations,” and no enforcement action was taken.
It will take several weeks at least before the USDA investigation of the tiger cubs’ injuries is complete, she said.
Smith said experts who run captive breeding programs for the Amur species survival program assured Brookfield officials that the injured cubs will live long, active lives once they recover, despite the missing leg and shortened tails.
“They were very positive,” Smith said. “The missing tail portions shouldn’t affect them, and there are wild tigers that have a missing limb that hunt and live normal lives.”
There are 438 Amur tigers living in North American and European zoos, so many that zoos limit their breeding, but in the wild they are extremely endangered, with perhaps only 500 living in far eastern Russian provinces and a few scattered in China and North Korea. Once called Siberian tigers, they no longer exist in Siberia.
The tigers grow larger than any other cat species: 800 pounds at full maturity for males and 500 pounds for females. They are fierce, muscular hunters that live in rugged mountain forests.
– – –
Past incidents at Brookfield
March 2006 — A Mexican gray wolf’s leg was snapped off in its exhibit, leading the zoo to modify the space and fill in holes along the fence.
November 2005 — A young Mexican gray wolf suffered a slightly mangled ear and bite wounds after older male wolves mobbed him in front of zoo visitors.
More Top Picks Pet Camera
October 2005 — A young giraffe named Kelsey, 7, died of an intestinal blockage after a brief illness.
June 2005 — A polar bear wandered through an unlocked door and came within 10 feet of a zoo employee. The keeper was unharmed.
April 2004 — Baraka, a 13-year-old lowland gorilla, died of an infection that started in her uterus and moved into her intestinal tract, creating a deadly abscess. Keepers had been preparing for exploratory surgery to determine the cause of her illness when she died.
November 2003 — A northern gray wolf was shot to death after it seized the arm of a woman who jumped a fence to reach into its cage.
———-