Indah & Amir

Our  tiger pair arrived at Howletts in 2006 – the male Amir was born on the 27th March 2005 and came in from Wuppertal Zoo, while the female was born on the 20th May 2005 and was transferred from Dudley Zoo. This pair has been together for a few years now and they are truly a love-match! So we hope that we will soon see their first litter, which will be a valuable addition to the captive population of this Critically Endangered species.

Confirmed water-lovers, our Sumatran tigers can often be seen cooling off in their pool. They are fed a large meal twice a week, and have smaller feeds of rabbit or chicken in between.  Recently, keeper Ben Warren decided to up the ante and get these pampered felines to work a little harder for their food. He started by first placing their meat inside a plastic barrel, which was then filled with other bottles and pieces of tyre before finally firmly securing the lid.  The barrel was then placed in the centre of a stack of heavy duty tractor tyres.  If that wasn't tricky enough, this was then covered up and wedged in place with other smaller tyres to make a mealtime with a difference!

The aim of this exercise is to encourage problem solving and activity and make the tigers work for their food as they would in the wild, rather than having an easy meal.  The Aspinall Foundation's Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks are committed to high standards of animal husbandry and keepers regularly liaise with the parks' enrichment officer to ensure species both big and small are stimulated and able to engage in natural behaviours, an important part of maintaining healthy, happy animals who will hopefully go on to breed.

Indah recently underwent a small procedure with an anaesthetic so the vets could x-ray her leg. She has been limping for a while so an x-ray would show any breakages, fractures or abnormalities with the tendons. The procedure went very smoothly and the x-ray showed no breaks or fractures - when she was examined it appeared that one of the joints was looser than the other which would suggest a possible tendon problem. Despite her  leg problem and her temporary separation from Amir the bond between these two love-cats remains strong!