International Tiger Day celebrated at Auckland Zoo
Friday, 29 July 2016
Frozen milk, blood and neck-bones were on the menu for two giant felines celebrating International Tiger Day at Auckland Zoo on Friday.
Molek, the 18-year-old tiger, licked the first ice block followed by Berani, 8, who chomped through the crunchy neck bones once mum was done.
Extra treats - a bundle of smelly blankets and an orange mussel buoy - were also enthusiastically put to good use.
The food and toys mimic the wide variety of stimuli the big cats would face in the wild - and their keepers want to keep it that way.
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'Yes, they're in captivity but we like to keep things for them as natural as possible - we have no contact with our tigers,' carnivore keeper Emma Pearce said.
'And we try to give them as big a food item as possible, still with the hide and bones still on, so they're getting all the nutritional values out of it.'
Despite this hands-off approach, Pearce said the keepers still have individual relationships with each tiger.
'As zookeepers we're in this amazingly privileged position of being able to get to know and build really strong relationships with our animals; they become our friends,' carnivore leader Lauren Booth said.
'We then get to share them with our visitors, and give people some insight into their wonderful quirks and personalities.'
Molek, who is about 70 in tiger years, loves tousling with a ball of blankets.
'She's very vocal - she won't roar or hiss, it's mostly just the 'mirrrrr' noise,' Booth said.
Berani dislikes tall men but loves playing with the orange buoy in the water - other coloured buoys are okay but the bright orange one is his favourite.
Molek and Berani, along with Molek's brother Jaka, are Sumatran tigers.
They hail not from the tropical forests of Sumatra in Indonesia, as their name suggests, but from a intensive breeding programme working tirelessly to save the species.
The three were all born in captivity and been zoo-hopping between Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland to make the most of breeding opportunities.
There are an estimated 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, rendering them critically endangered by WWF.
But there is hope.
Auckland Zoo donates a portion of every admission ticket sold to 21st Century Tiger and several tiger protection units around Kerinci Seblat National Park in Sumatra.
Sumatran-based programme director Debbie Martyr said 100 Sumatran tiger records were made in the past year, with tigers present in over 60 per cent of all patrols.
'It means that they're actually seeing evidence of tigers, which is great news. To spot an elusive critically endangered animal 60 per cent of the time is amazing,' said.
Martyr has been involved in more than 110 wildlife crime investigations, some of which have seen tiger poachers sentenced to prison terms and fines.
It is Auckland Zoo's hope that people will bond with their tigers and become more aware of the plight of tigers in the wild.
'The point of International Tiger Day is to create more awareness of the species. A lot people know tigers are a really cool animal but they don't realise how much trouble they're in, in the wild … but they also don't realise that everyone can do their little bit to help,' Pearce said.
The zoo's spokeswoman Jane Healy said Kiwis could contribute to tiger conservation by buying products that are palm oil-free.
The palm oil industry contributes to the destruction of the rainforest ecosystems tigers live in, she said.
'Palm oil is in approximately half of all supermarket products, and a big issue is that currently it can just be listed as vegetable oil, and there are lots of other different names for it too, so hard for consumers to know what they're buying.
'Our wallet card lists the range of names it can be, so people can check this against ingredients list.'