RANCHI: A seven-year-old tigress gave birth to three cubs at the
Birsa Zoological Park last month.
The park authorities on Sunday released photographs of the mother and her three children enjoying a family time in their enclosure. “The mother and her children are in good health,” the authorities said.
Anushka, the tigress, was brought here in 2016 from the
Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad. The cubs were fathered by Malik, a five-year-old male. Like
Anushka, Malik was also raised in the Hyderabad zoo before he made Ranchi his home in May 2016.
The ‘royal’ family has been living away from the public eye in a secluded enclosure within the 230-acre park since April 6, the day when the cubs were born. The enclosure is also off-limits to the park’s attendants except a few. “Anushka is charging at anyone who gets closer to the fence,” a staff said.
Though they are monitoring the health of the cubs, experts at the zoo have not yet been able to determine their sex. “We will not get closer to the cubs till they are eight weeks old. This is required because the cubs need to adapt to their surroundings,” Dr.
Ajay Kumar, the zoo’s vet, said.
As the furry cute cubs stick close to their mother and explore their enclosure with wobbly steps, the zoo authorities have a reason to smile. For the time since 1994, a tigress has delivered cubs in captivity at this zoo.
Sugreev and Durga, the zoo’s first tiger couple, were translocated from different zoos across the country more than a decade ago. Durga, who died in 2016 with old age problems, did not give birth ever. The authorities had attempted in vain to encourage her into mating after Shiva, then a three-year-old male, was brought here from the Bannerghatta National Park in Karnataka in the fall of 2014. Sugreev though lived 18 years in captivity before dying in 2015.
