BY SANDY BAUER INQUIRER STAFF WRITER PHILADELPHIA – She paced in front of the mesh, flopped to her back and writhed seductively. She was the experienced one. He hid behind a tree, staring at her, then drew closer. He was middle-aged and still a virgin.
For about an hour Tuesday morning, Kira and Dmitri, two Amur tigers, sniffed and growled as they
got aquainted across the divide of two separate exhibits at the Philadelphia Zoo.
The plan – a dangerous one – was to get them to mate.
But it was worth the risk. Both carry valuable genes that can assure the viability of North America’s 144 captive Amur tigers, only 400 of which remain in the wild.
The staff was nervous. Putting two tigers together can be fatal.
“Tigers are claws and teeth,” said Jim Ronemus, assistant curator of carnivores. “The whole animal is a machine to make those two things work.”
INQUIRER: Frankly, We Were Starting To Wonder If They Were Gay [via SUN HERALD]