Sleeping with the enemy

Pigs and tigers are not a new combination. Here a tiger plays with a pig in a zoo in Sriracha, Chonburi Province in Thailand where tiger cubs are encouraged to take milk from pigs to speed up their growth - Image from Reuters

Usually pigs would be food for tigers. But in Ukraine a very close bond has developed between the hunter and the hunted. Three tiger cubs are being taken care of by a pig on a farm in Dnipropetrovsk, southern Ukraine, after being abandoned by their mother. Farm worker Maria Mandjeli says that the piglets are not too happy on these foreign visitors sharing their mother. They try to push the tigers away and when she puts her hand to shield the tiger cubs the piglets bite her. So she holds the tiger cubs and assists them to have their milk without being trampled by the piglets. The cubs' mother live at a private zoo but the zookeepers had to take the cubs to the farm next door because the mother refused to care for them. The zoo director Yuriy Aksenych, however, defends her saying that she was born in a zoo and hence "has no experience of nature."

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