July 14, 2006
Everything here is nice and quiet. The cubs had their weekly weighing yesterday, and the smallest girl gained the most weight—1.7 pounds in one week! She is now 11.9 pounds, her sister is 13.2, and the boy is an impressive 14.7 pounds at only seven weeks. While they still get most of their food from their mother, Soyono, we see more and more interest in the special zoo carnivore diet that the adult cats get. I think all the cubs eat at least a little of the meat every day.
Often, now, when their handsome father, Rokan, comes inside in the evening, Soyono has the cubs in the enclosure next to his, so they can all say "Hi!" In the wild, tiger mothers raise their young alone, without any help from the father, unlike lions, which form family groups called prides. We are often asked why we keep the tigers separate, and it is because it would be unnatural for them to live together. Rokan is always very happy to see his children (and their mother!), and they rub heads through the mesh that separates them and make the tiger greeting noise called chuffing to each other. But male tigers don't have the same instincts as male lions and Rokan might not be willing to put up with the cubs climbing on him and biting his tail and just generally being cubs. Sometimes we feel sorry for Soyono when we see her on the cub cam trying to sleep with a cub chomping on her ear but she's a patient mom and doesn't seem to mind.
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