Tiger cubs breastfed by woman die in Burma

Two Bengal tiger cubs that were breastfed by a woman for nearly six weeks have died of dehydration in a zoo in Burma, according to a report.

The cubs were taken from their mother after she killed one of their siblings and refused to nurse them. Hla Hla, aged 40, the mother of a seven-month-old baby and relative of an employee at Rangoon zoo, had volunteered to breastfeed the cubs when bottle feeding failed.

“We tried our best to save their lives but they have been deprived of their natural mother’s milk, and their livers could not accept human milk,” according to the Interview journal, quoting Dr Khin Maung Win of the Rangoon Zoological Garden.

Their diets were supplemented with powdered milk and vitamin drops in the last week of April, and they were put into intensive care.

“We kept the tiger cubs in an air-conditioned room but they died of heat and dehydration,” he told the journal. He said the female cub died on April 27, and the male on May 3.

The cubs were among three born at the zoo March 17, to a Bengal tiger, Noah Noah, and her mate, who were sent from Thailand under an animal exchange programme in 2001. The cubs were the first Bengal tigers born at the zoo in 16 years.

The dead cubs will be stuffed and put on display at a museum, the journal reported.

Burma, which has the largest number of tigers in the world after India, is home to two species – the Bengal and the Indochinese.

Burma’s tiger population has plunged drastically to 150 or fewer in recent years from an estimated 3,000 nearly 25 years ago.