The Madhya Pradesh forest officials' experiment to rear tiger cubs with a dummy mother failed as all the three cubs died after about two and a half months.
All the three cubs that were reared with the help of 'dummy tigress mother' at Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) have died of parvovirus infection.
BTR field director Mridul Pathak while talking to The Pioneer said that one tiger cub died on Saturday night while the other died on Sunday and the third one died on Wednesday. With this, the State has lost fifth tiger within a week and eleventh this year.
Pathak said the cubs were diagnosed with parvo viral infection on April 12, following which they were being treated under the intensive care of a team of veterinary doctors but their immunity power was very less as they could not get mother's milk. The four veterinary doctors tried their best to save these cubs but could not succeed.
Pathak further said the three cubs were brought to Bandhavgarh on January 22 this year after their mother died due to electrocution in the buffer zone of Sanjay Dubri Tiger Reserve in mid-January.
"As they were very young, we experimented with a dummy toy tigress mother to rear them. The dummy tigress had been fitted with artificial nipples and a milk bottle to feed the tiger cubs. It was working," he said.
On being asked that did the experiment of rearing these three cubs with a dummy tigress mother failed, the BTR field director said that it could be said but actually this would not be correct, because they surpassed the surviving period in absence of their mother and were well getting acquainted with the park habitat.
BTR has one of the highest tiger densities in the country, with 85 adult tigers and forty plus cubs. According to the last tiger census conducted in January 2015, tiger numbers in MP had increased from 257 in 2010 to 308 in 2015. However since January 2015, 51 tigers have died in MP.