The two Sumatran tiger cubs just turned a week old and almost doubled in size, Hamilton Zoo exotics curator Mark Turner said.
“We are very excited about the newborn stripeys and they are doing really, really well. Mum Kirana is doing everything right, the bond is very strong and she spends lots of time grooming them.”
Turner said the growth spurt was expected since the cubs “are pretty helpless” and don’t do much apart from nursing and lying around.
“Their eyes are still closed until they are about 10 days old ... They won’t be on display until they are between 12 and 16 weeks old, but we are working on getting a TV monitor up at the tiger enclosure by the end of this week, so visitors can see footage of them.”
He said the team had yet to determine the sex and carry out an initial health check-up on the cubs.
“Kirana is a first-time mum, so we don’t want to disturb her. We are giving her space to raise the cubs... and will do the health check when they are two weeks of age.
“It will just be a quick interaction, checking the sex, their health and weighing them.
“Once we know what sex they are, we will make plans around naming them. We haven’t discussed yet if we will have a naming competition or if we choose the names.”
Hamilton Zoo's tiger cubs are growing fast: Left is a picture from the day they were born, the picture on the right was taken on January 10 when they were exactly a week old. Photo / Hamilton Zoo
Turner said the birth of the tiger cubs was “pretty exciting” on many levels.
“They are the first to be born at Hamilton Zoo since the birth of Kirana and her brother, Kembali, in 2014, and Auckland Zoo also just welcomed two cubs, born only days before ours.
“Having four cubs in New Zealand at the same time - that doesn’t happen very often.”
“We recorded 15 matings in a day, but that’s not that many. Ideally, you want around 30, so it was hard for us to say if she was pregnant.
“Around the two-month stage, her body condition changed, we started to see nipple development and this sort of thing, but I didn’t want to jinx it until the cubs were actually born.”
Sumatran tigress Kirana and tiger Scout. Photos / Hamilton Zoo
The first cub was born in the early hours of January 3, with the second cub being born at 2.30am.
“We have a video monitor that we can link with. Keeper Emma [Pearce] was the first one to notice Kirana had given birth. Emma got up that night to let her dog out, checked the monitor and there was the first cub.”
For Turner, the birth of the cubs was also special on a personal level.
“I’ve been involved in breeding tigers many times, three times at Wellington Zoo, once at Melbourne Zoo, five times at Australia Zoo, and now here.
“It never gets less exciting, but this one stood out for me because I was involved in raising Scout and now he is a dad. It’s a full circle moment.”
Talking about full circle: Scout’s sister Delilah and Kirana’s brother Kembali have been matched with each other and became parents last year, making their offspring and the new Hamilton cubs cousins.
The two Hamilton-born cubs will stay in the Tron for at least two years. Where they will go from there is up to the breeding programme regional coordinator who is based in Sydney.
Currently, four zoos in New Zealand have tigers, but it is possible that Hamilton-born tigers could head across the ditch to Australia once they are old enough.
Scout won’t share an enclosure with his offspring, tigers are solitary animals and only come together for mating. The female raises the cubs by herself.
However, Scout will be able to see the cubs through the fence.
“We expect him to be really interested in them. It will be nice to see how he reacts to seeing them.”
As if the birth of the new two cubs wasn’t exciting enough, Hamilton Zoo is preparing for the arrival of a new mystery resident in February.
The new resident, to be transferred from Australia, is also part of the feline family and native to Africa and Asia.
Danielle Zollickhofer is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined NZME in 2021 and is writing for the Waikato Herald.
