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 zoo
keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the
babies around the mother tiger.
25 Lives
Came across this little story on Livejournal when I was looking for inspiration for my creative writing class. Thanks to Toni’s blog, I remembered how much I loved this.
25 LIVES by tongari
