I received this in an email and thought it was pretty cool.
In a zoo in California, a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of
triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the
pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny
size, they died shortly after birth. The mother tiger after recovering
from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although
physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her
litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression.
The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate another mother's
cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos
across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger
cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother.
The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in
a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the
care of a different species. The only "orphans" that could be found
quickly, were a litter of wiener pigs.
The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed
the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork
chops?
Take a look........ you won't believe your eyes!!!!
Image 1 |
Image 2
Given that this occurred in a zoo in California, I'm amazed they didn't just put the tigress on some form of kitty cat Prozac.