Grieving Mother Tiger Caring for Piglets in Tiger Skins-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Several pictures of an adult tiger seeming to be mothering some piglets wrapped in tiger skins. The email says that the pictures are from a zoo in California where the mother tiger had lost triplets and the grieving was so bad that it began to affect her health. A search for surrogate cubs was fruitless so the zoo decided to capitalize on one species sometimes rearing the young of another species and brought in some orphaned piglets, wrapped them in tiger skins, and accomplished a feat never seen in a zoo before. One email refers to the tiger as “Mother of the Year.”
The Truth:
The pictures are not from a zoo in California but the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand, a popular attraction that boasts of 200 tigers, 100,000 crocodiles, trained pigs, elephants, and other animals. The zoo features creative shows and displays of animals including these pictures of an adult tiger with piglets dressed like tiger cubs. One of the goals of the zoo is to demonstrate how animals of different species can live peacefully together. One of the experiments was introducing baby piglets to a mother tiger (who herself had been nursed by a pig) and it worked. At one time the mother tiger nursing piglets was in an enclosure next to an enclosure where a sow was nursing baby tigers. The zoo says those cubs grew faster from the pig’s milk.
The story about the California zoo, the grieving mother tiger, and the orphaned piglets is a hoax that somebody decided to attach to the pictures.
Updated 12/4/06