Orphaned Tiger Cubs at Bandhavgarh Take to Dummy ‘Mummy’
The tiger cubs rejected the bottle-feeds that the rangers offered, so bottles were fitted inside the dummy tiger.
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A cuddly dummy tigress fitted with synthetic nipples and a milk bottle is feeding three orphaned tiger cubs. Park rangers at the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh came up with the idea to help three traumatised cubs deal with the death of their mother.
The rangers had earlier tried to feed goat milk to the cubs directly through bottles but when they refused, they fitted bottles inside the dummy mummy.
To mimic their natural habitat, a special enclosure has been built for the tiger cubs inside their compound using twigs, grass and sand.
To recreate the feeling for the cubs of being close to their real mother, forest officials have even rubbed traces of faeces of the now dead mother on the cuddly toy tigress and the grass.
The cubs were found in a critical condition after the body of their mother was discovered near a river in January this year.
The rangers quickly treated the cubs for dehydration and rushed them to the enclosure for recuperation and survival care.
It is suspected that the tigress may have died after brushing against an electric fence erected by cattle farmers.
Video Editor: Vivek Gupta
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