Tiger cubs suckled by sow in a pigsty

Tiger cubs suckled by sow in a pigsty

KIEV: It’s not quite lions lying down with lambs but pretty close: a pig at a farm in eastern Ukraine is nursing three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother.

Noviy Channel TV says the tigers were born at a Dnipropetrovsk zoo last week, but their mother refused to care for them.

Zookeepers took them to a farm where a sow had given birth to about a dozen piglets and had no objections when the cubs also started suckling.

Zoo director Yuriy Aksenych said the mother tiger appeared to have lost her feral instincts after years in captivity. – Sapa-AP

Published on the web by Mercury on September 24, 2008.

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4626443

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