# In other strange news... Report: Breast-fed tiger cubs die of dehydration



## Lexus (Jan 19, 2005)

*Report: Breast-fed tiger cubs die of dehydration 
Bengals did not take to human milk, Myanmar newspaper says*

Reuters
Updated: 3:55 a.m. ET May 12, 2005


YANGON, Myanmar - Two Bengal tiger cubs breast fed for weeks by a Yangon housewife have died of heat and dehydration, a Myanmar newspaper reported on Thursday.

The black-striped, orange-brown cubs drew worldwide attention when Hla Htay, a mother of a baby boy, answered a plea for help from Yangon’s zoo and fed the cats three times a day after they were rejected by their tigress mother.

But the cubs -- a male and female born on March 17 -- did not take well to human milk and they grew weaker as temperatures soared in the hot season.

The male died on May 3, six days after his sister perished.

“The main causes of death were scorching weather and lack of milk from the natural mother,” Dr. Khin Maung Win of the Yangon Zoological Garden told the Myanmar-language Interview Journal.

“We did all we could to save them. They were kept in an air-conditioned room, but their livers could not accept human milk,” he said.

Three cubs were born at the zoo, but their mother killed one and refused to nurse the others. After bottle feeding failed, the zoo put out a call for breastfeeding mothers.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7824645/


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## fish_doc (Jan 31, 2005)

I Guess they dont realize cows also can give milk?


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

It wouldn't have worked any better. If the zoo had to resort to finding a lactating human, then I suppose we can safely assume that they didn't have many cows. Yaks, maybe, but not dairy cows, and apparently not the knowledge of how to augment the milk to make it usable for tigers. Here in the First World we would have just whipped up some "formula" and been done with it, but things are very different over there, it seems.


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## fish_doc (Jan 31, 2005)

Im sure if they asked for help zoos from all over the world would have shipped stuff to help. At least here in the US many zoos work together to benefit the whole.


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## osteoporoosi (Jan 27, 2005)

What an odd idea, human milk is way more sugary than tigers.


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