animal anthropology

a delightful account that messes up (i always enjoy doing that in the gp classroom...) our perceived cognition / understanding about what constitutes animal 'instincts' toward predator-prey relationships as well as 'parenting' , 'foster-care' and 'motherhood' located within the animal kingdom

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In a zoo in California, a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born premature ly and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth. The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only orphans' that could be found quickly, were a litter of weanling pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork chops?

Take a closer look...you won't believe your eyes!!

Now, please tell me one more time...

Why can't the rest of the world get along?

----------------with deep thanks to shari for the story-------------