A Persian tiger cub was born at the Miskolc Zoo and had its first veterinary check-up this week.
The Miskolc Zoo said on its website on Wednesday that the puppy, born on January 25, had received its mandatory vaccinations and a microchip for identification at its first veterinary examination, and was also weighed, proving that it is developing well.
It was reported that the main food for the cub is still mother’s milk, but he already has a taste for meat. It also turns out that he is male, but he has not yet been given a name.
Visitors to the zoo will be asked to help choose the name on March 15th, who will be able to vote for the name of the baby tiger that day.
Miskolc Zoo’s first Persian tiger, then three-year-old Tarika, arrived from Lisbon Zoo in Portugal in 2012 as part of a European species protection programme. Her first cub, Turan, was born in 2017 and currently resides at the Haifa Zoo in Israel.
Tareca gets a new partner from Augsburg in 2022, and their first puppy is born on January 25th as a result of “fry”.
The leopard is the big cat with the largest distribution area, since it occurs from the southern part of Africa to the Far East, where several subspecies are distinguished depending on its habitat, size and colour.
However, the number of each subspecies has declined significantly, and this is especially true of the largest subspecies living in the Middle East, the Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxcolor), which, according to estimates, can live freely no more than a thousand copies.
To save the endangered big cats, European zoos were among the first to establish a coordinated breeding program in the 1980s.
The zoo writes that about 100 individuals of this species currently live in zoos in Europe and the Middle East, including three in Miskolc.
