...buh?

[thistlechaser]

How many things are wrong here? Let's count!

"Hla Htay, 40, a relative of a Yangon Zoological Gardens staffer, breastfeeds a tiger cub in Yangon, Myanmar."

I don't even know what order to put the wrong things in! Tigers need different sort of milk than humans (or dogs or moose), don't they have a fake tiger milk mix they can use? And failing that, how about a nursing dog or cougar or something? Something non-human? And... and... and doesn't that hurt? *tries not to think of the details*

Helping wildlife is something we all should do, but sheesh!

Comments

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

they do need different kinds of milk. I dont know what their milk composition is, but i suspect its more similar to cat's than dog's if you wanted a generic "mix". Real milk though is usually better in whole or in supplement to mix, and being so endangered, and my impression this was an emergancy (?) might have had soemthign to do with this?

Fostering to another species can be difficult since the mother may not accept them and may kick them out of the nest or even kill them. It depends on the species- for example, in rodents, you coudl foster just about *anything* onto a gerbil, but you'll likely have a bloody mess if you tried fostering anything onto a hamster. I've no idea how accepting a dog or couger etc would be and that might be a factor.

Another concern (and this is about fostering in general, be it to couger,dog or human) is that many things can transfer through milk. Within a species this can be beneficial for giving young immunity/resistance to illnesses they have yet to be exposed to but their mother has. It however can also *give* them soem illnesses or drugs if the mother is ill or taking drugs at the time that can pass through milk. Transfer of things that can have an effect (good or bad) on the offspring is more common in closer species (eg cougar) but can happen in others as well. That *might* be another reason to avoid fostering to another large cat species. It still could be dangerous with humans, dogs or other species, possibly introducing soemthign to the tigers the endagered species doesn't need one more thing to cope with at this point.

So yeah, rather stupid. I just hope its a temporary emergancy measure.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Many years ago (15 or more) I worked in a small zoo. We had all sorts of dry food for the animals (goat food, monkey chow, pig food, lion food) -- bags and bags of it, one type for each species. While we didn't do almost any breeding (other than for the "petting zoo" animals), I'd think there would be a type of milk for each species, just like there was for dry food... (Though perhaps milk is more complex than food somehow.)

It could have been an emergency, yeah. But even then, couldn't they have milked some other animal and used that? Just seems so strange...

[quasilemur.livejournal.com]

I think if milking a tiger were an option, she wouldn't be having to breastfeed in the firstplace. As for any other animal, I don't know if that would be any better, but it would sure make for a great Milking Minigame.

Milk the Animals! Hemangi the Tiger needs milk, but that pesky Hanuman has mixed up all the animals! Run from cage to cage to find milk for little Hemangi, but watch out for the Hanuman's coconuts!

The responsible part of me is sorta "WFT, mate", about this. But the rest of me thinks it's freakin' cool.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I didn't mean milk a tiger (that'd be some trick!), but milk a goat or something...

*snickers at minigame*