Ah, I love a story like this...
A friend of mine sent this to me in an email.
In a California zoo, a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to pregnancy complications, the cubs were born prematurely and died shortly after birth. Mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although physically fine. The vets felt that the loss of her litter had caused her to fall into a depression.
The doctors decided that if she could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the tiger mother.
The vets 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.
The results...
All right. Everyone, in unison..... "Awwwwwwwwwwwww!"
BTW, I see by the time stamp on the bottom photo this took place in 2004. OK, so it's not new, but it's still cute. Cute cute cute cute cute!
EDIT: Just learned this has been debunked on Snopes.com. Boooo. : (
In a California zoo, a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to pregnancy complications, the cubs were born prematurely and died shortly after birth. Mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although physically fine. The vets felt that the loss of her litter had caused her to fall into a depression.
The doctors decided that if she could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the tiger mother.
The vets 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.
The results...
All right. Everyone, in unison..... "Awwwwwwwwwwwww!"
BTW, I see by the time stamp on the bottom photo this took place in 2004. OK, so it's not new, but it's still cute. Cute cute cute cute cute!
EDIT: Just learned this has been debunked on Snopes.com. Boooo. : (