A rare Sumatran tigress killed and ate her own cubs at a zoo in Jerusalem, zookeepers said Monday.
Staff at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo said everything was fine after the tigress gave birth to three cubs on Nov. 17, The Times of Israel reported. Though one of the cubs died shortly after birth, the mother continued caring for the remaining two. The cubs' first medical checkup was scheduled for Monday.
But zookeepers encountered a horrific turn of events on Friday when they discovered the 5-week-old cubs were missing from their mother's den.
"We discovered they had been killed when we went to weigh them," Nili Avnei-Magen, the zoo's chief veterinarian, told the Agence France-Presse. He said they have no idea why the mother would eat her young after first caring for them.
"This is disappointing and very, very sad," Avnei-Magen told Haaretz.
Wild tigers and ones in captivity have been known to eat their offspring when under stress, if there is a lack of food or a desire to mate, The Times of Israel reported.
This isn't the first time the tigress, reportedly named Chana, has given birth at the zoo. Her first and second litter died after birth. She gave birth a third time in 2009, but later abandoned the cub. Zoo staff was able to save the abandoned cub and transported him to a French zoo.
"This was a complete surprise," Avnei-Magen told Haaretz. "We truly thought we were beyond this and that she was on the right path, and we had already planned the next stage. We will learn the lessons."
Less than 500 of the critically endangered Sumatran tigers are believed to be left in the wild on the Indonesian island, AFP reported. But conservation efforts have increased their numbers, with 261 existing in captivity around the world, up from 180 in 2008.
