LEIPZIG, Aug 10\u00a0\u2014 Three tiger cubs were euthanised after their mother failed to care for them, the Leipzig Zoo in eastern Germany announced yesterday, reported German Press Agency (dpa).<\/p>\n
The Amur tiger cubs, just three days old, were put down to prevent suffering, a statement said.<\/p>\n
The zoo explained that hand-rearing was not considered an option, as it would conflict with principles of species-appropriate wildlife management.<\/p>\n
The cubs were born on Wednesday evening to Yushka, a first-time mother.<\/p>\n
The tigress turned away from her offspring a few hours after giving birth.<\/p>\n
Such behaviour is sad from a human perspective but is part of life in the animal kingdom, said zoo director J\u00f6rg Junhold.<\/p>\n
Over the next two days, without their mother\u2019s care, the cubs became frigid and increasingly weak.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, when the young animals no longer show any active behaviour and thus no stimulus for feeding or milk production is triggered in the mother, we must fulfil our heavy responsibility and spare the young animals the suffering of starvation,\u201d explained veterinarian Andreas Bernhard.<\/p>\n
However, the zoo plans to continue its Amur tiger \u2014 also known as the Siberian tiger \u2014 breeding programme with Yushka.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe will be able to contribute to the survival of the species through natural breeding in the future,\u201d explained zoo director Junhold. \u2014 Bernama\/dpa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEIPZIG, Aug 10\u00a0\u2014 Three tiger cubs were euthanised after their mother failed to care for them, the Leipzig…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[47492,47497,47495,64,63,5717,47491,128,47494,47498,47496,47499,338,47493],"class_list":["post-57881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-amur-tiger-cubs","tag-amur-tiger-cubs-euthanised","tag-animal-euthanasia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-germany","tag-leipzig-zoo","tag-science","tag-siberian-tiger","tag-siberian-tiger-breeding-programme","tag-species-conservation","tag-species-appropriate-wildlife-management","tag-wildlife","tag-yushka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}