Thursday, November 16, 2006

Mother of the Year

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 weaner pigs. The zookeepers 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!!









Love can conquer all, can it not? From an absolutely rockin' email I received today!

3 comments:

Obsidian Kitten said...

OMG! i love stuff like that--i saw on one of the Nat'l Geo/Animal Planet channels a leopard that "adopted" a 1-day-old baboon for a day or two...the mother baboon had attacked the peopard (did you know they do that? it was shocking! they're enemies of leopards, apparently very mean and dangerous)...

anyway, after the leopard killed the baboon (it was a young leopard, an older leopard would've had the better sense to run away rather than fight such a formidable enemy) the leopard found this little baby baboon still clinging to the mother! and the leopard carried the baby up a tree and they fell asleep together!

the next day the leopard went off hunting (as i remember it) and the rest of the baboons rescued the baby. it was incredible, though.

anyway, i'm so glad you visited my blog. being bipolar is a rollercoaster ride from hell for sure...my unmedicted state is unliveable and i wouldn't wish this disease on anyone. (my spouse is bipolar as well--the rule in our house is we're not both allowed to go off the deep end at the same time)

i gotta explore more of your blog. i love all animals, cats especially, and i adore big cats

living on a farm with llamas and chickens is a wild adventure, too!

oh, also i cross-stitch and just learned from my grandma how to crochet (ok, i can make granny squares, that's about it, lol)

Tracy said...

AWWWWW how sweet is that! Now that touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for sharing.

Raine said...

OH MY GOD!!! Ok you made me laugh- thanks for that. What a cool thing!!