Rescued tiger cub dies in Tirupati zoo

Tirupati: One of the four female tiger cubs rescued from Kurnool district three months ago in Andhra Pradesh died at a zoo here after being sick, a forest official said on Wednesday.

The five-month-old cub, which spent more than two months with its three siblings in the zoo was suffering from pulmonary edema and nephritis.

“The cub died on Monday morning. Preliminary post-mortem report suggests it died of pulmonary edema and nephritis. Nephritis is kidney inflammation and pulmonary edema means more water content in the lungs,” Tirupati Zoo curator Selvam told PTI.

Following the autopsy, the forest department sent the visceral organs to the state laboratory for further analysis.

According to the official, though the cubs are monitored regularly, some congenital conditions may lie hidden which could manifest at a later time like this.

He further said the remaining three cubs are doing fine and are active, while their blood samples were extracted as a precautionary measure. Reports analysing these samples are expected on Monday.

Since the cubs were rescued from the wild, he noted that it is not easy to handle them on lines of complete health examination which could be done on humans, even extracting a blood sample could be a task.

Other than not eating well in the past few days, the cub did not exhibit any major signs of ill-health, Selvam added.