Frequently Asked Questions

Thanks to all of you who voted on the cubs' names. The winning Indonesian names are:

Marah (MAR-ah): "angry" or "fierce"

Jalan (JA-lan): "journey" or "road"

Besar (BA-sar) : "big" or "mighty"

Sumatran tigers are very rare, even more so than giant pandas! There are about 250 in zoos worldwide and fewer than 500 in the wild. Because of this, there is a breeding program among the zoos to make sure that the gene pool of the captive population remains healthy. This means that zoos in the program have agreed to "share." That's how we got Rokan. He came to us from a zoo in Louisiana. Likewise, some of our tigers have gone to other zoos.

The cubs' grandmother Kerinci's last litter of three cubs have all gone to other zoos—Mike to Los Angeles, Eric to Lowry Park in Tampa, and Chrissie went to Indianapolis, where she recently had three cubs of her own! As hard as it is to see them go, we know it's what's best for the tigers.

In early January 2006, the cubs left the Zoo for their new home at Landry's Downtown Aquarium in Denver, Colorado, as part of the Sumatran Tiger Species Survival Plan.

Learn more about tigers.

Absolutely not!! Soyono would have a fit if we tried to play with the cubs, and they would be terrified! When you see tigers in shows or circuses they have been hand raised by humans and handled by people from the day they were born. Even then, they will always be dangerous animals because they will always be tigers. No matter how early you start or how hard you try, you can never train a tiger to be anything but what it is: a beautiful, awe-inspiring hunter.

Our tigers here are raised by their mothers, and while the keepers do have a very special relationship with the cats, we are not tigers and they are not humans or pets and that is just the way it is. We wouldn't want it any other way.