{"id":249948,"date":"2026-01-17T18:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/249948\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T18:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:21:10","slug":"endangered-tigers-celebrate-first-birthday-with-pile-of-boxes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/249948\/","title":{"rendered":"Endangered tigers celebrate first birthday with pile of boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Three endangered tigers have celebrated their first birthday with a rummage through a pile of cardboard boxes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Nova, Nadirah and Naresh have turned one and Kasha Carter, head of carnivores at West Midlands Safari Park, said: &#8220;As we all know cats love boxes, so we thought we would treat them to a massive stack of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Sumatran tiger cubs were born as part of a European breeding programme, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) believes there may be just 400 of their species left in the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">They are said to be close to extinction because of habitat loss, conflict with humans and poaching for the illegal trade in tiger body parts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A handful of guests got to see the one year olds destroy the tower of boxes to claim the snacks hidden within.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The safari park said Nova was the first to discover the presents and there were a few &#8220;sibling squabbles&#8221; for the best boxes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Carter said: &#8220;Transforming simple things [like boxes] into a world of play, curiosity and growing strength, is all a vital part of how the cubs have spent their first year of learning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The safari park said play like this was &#8220;essential for supporting animals&#8217; physical health and psychological well-being, encouraging them to express natural behaviours&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The tigers were born as part of an EEP (EAZA Ex-Situ Programme), which is a collaboration between European zoos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three endangered tigers have celebrated their first birthday with a rummage through a pile of cardboard boxes. Nova,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-249948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}