BHUBANESWAR: The famous Nandankanan Zoological Park was plunged into grief on Friday morning over the tragic deaths of all the five newborns of tigress Priyanka.Although it is fairly common for the first litter of a tigress to perish, the Zoo authorities had pinned hopes on the cubs’ survival. The five, including a white cub, were barely two-days old. Amplifying the tragedy, it was after a gap of 11 years that a normal-coloured Royal Bengal Tiger (RBT) pair had given birth to a white cub in the Zoo.On Thursday evening, Zoo sources said the animal keeper had noticed that three of the cubs appeared to limp but by Friday morning, all the newborns were found dead.All the while the tigress had apparently stayed away from her cubs.The abandonment or rejection led to the death, Zoo officials said.Director of the Nandankanan Zoological Park, Dr Sudarshan Panda later ordered an inquiry by Deputy Director S N Mohapatra to establish the actual causes behind the tiger cubs’ death. The autopsy confirmed the fact that the cubs were not taken care of by their mother.“Stomachs of three cubs were found empty during the postmortem while other two had been crushed under the weight of the mother,” Mohapatra’s report said.Apart from the fact that hand-rearing of carnivore newborns is not possible, rejection of the first litter by mothers in the wildlife is not a rare trend. In Nandankanan itself, a chimpanzee had abandoned its first child, Kartik, which had to be hand-reared by the Zoo officials. A leopard had consumed its two babies in the recent past.Besides, the litter size of Priyanka was too large. “Five is a big number for the first litter and we never expected all to survive. However, we hoped at least two to three cubs will live on,” Director Panda said.In fact, the Zoo had ensured that adequate nutrition and isolation was provided to the mother. Barring the animal keeper and the doctor, no one else had been allowed to visit the enclosure.However, the tigress apparently did not have motherly instincts to raise the cubs besides the fact that five newborns were one too many to rear.Since 1966, as many as 347 tiger births have been recorded at Nandankanan Zoo. Out of these, there were only three instances in which a litter of five had been recorded. On two occasions (including the latest one), all the five cubs had perished.
Comments
0 comment