More Siberian Tigers Bred for Lives in Cages

Three small tiger cubs have become the attraction of a small zoo in Abony, 90 kilometres east of the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

Visitors flock to the private zoo owned by Tibor Toth en masse to get a sight of the cute Siberian baby tigers and be able to hold and pet them.

The new additions to the zoo have brought Toth a step closer to fulfilling his dream of caring for a lots of animals. Having started his zoo about 15 years ago, Toth has earned a name for raising and taming lions and tigers.

The three female tiger cubs were born near Hamburg in Germany, but ended up in Hungary when they were only two and a half weeks old after their mother got ill and could not feed them anymore.The cubs are six monts old now and growing fast, drinking goats milk and eating special tiger feed.

Toth says he was inspired by Austrian-born naturalist and wildlife preservationist Joy Adamson, who in her book “Born Free” told the story of how she and her husband raised a lion cub and trained it to fend for itself. The famous cub named Elsa was later released back into the wild.

So in the middle of the 1990s, only a few years after the collapse of communism, Toth decided to start building his zoo.

He got a plot of land from the town and his zoo, which at the start had only a few animals, counted more than 60,000 visitors last year. It is financed from entry fees and personal donations and survives without any support from the state.

Toth says the tiger cubs will stay in the zoo and he even hopes to breed them.

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Marisa Krystian | May 25, 2012 12:44pm EDT | 1min:40sec

http://tv.ibtimes.com/siberian-tiger-cubs-bring-out-large-crowds-at-hungarian-zoo/5798.html