The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium continued its tiger baby bonanza this week, welcoming three more Amur cubs into the fold.
The triplets, born to 10-year-old Irisa, join a line of successful births of the endangered tiger in the past few years.
The newest additions are about 2½ pounds each, fragile but thriving, Tom Stalf, the zoo’s president and CEO, said on Wednesday.
Zookeepers are caring for them in an incubator after their inexperienced mother didn’t nurse them or act maternal.
Irisa delivered the triplets — her first cubs — on Tuesday morning.
“We’re pretty excited because we thought her biological clock had stopped ticking,” said Harry Peachey, curator of Asia Quest at the zoo. “She had bred before and never conceived.”
Peachey said Irisa had one undersized ovary that keepers thought reduced her chances of conceiving.
“She’s old to have babies, especially for the first time,” he said.
The father is 11-year-old Foli, who was moved to Rolling Hills Zoo in Kansas in February. He has been retired from breeding.
In March 2013, four female cubs were born in Columbus to Foli and 8-year-old Mara. A year earlier, the same tiger couple had twin boys — the first Amur cubs born at the zoo.
Mara raised the quadruplets, but the twins were hand-raised after a power failure kept keepers from monitoring their progress shortly after birth.
“Foli did his job very well, and we don’t need more Foli genes in the North American tiger population,” Doug Warmolts, vice president of animal care at the zoo, said in March.
Another male, Jupiter, has since arrived from the Czech Republic to live and breed at the zoo. His genetic makeup is new to North America and will increase the species’ diversity, Warmolts said.
Columbus zookeepers are following a species-survival plan for the tigers. Such plans are coordinated by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums for more than 450 species and offer a blueprint of which animals at which zoos should mate to produce offspring that are genetically and demographically varied, Warmolts said.
Amur tigers are critically endangered, with fewer than 400 left in the wild because of habitat loss, poaching for body parts used in traditional Chinese medicine, and overhunting of the animals the tigers prey on.
Also called Siberian tigers, there are fewer than 150 in captivity in accredited zoos in North America.
The Columbus Zoo now has 10 Amur tigers and has plenty of room for them, Peachey said. He couldn’t pinpoint why Columbus has had so many births.
“The hardest part is the introduction of the male and the female,” he said. “They’re essentially solitary cats so if you can get the introduction done, the rest follows naturally.”
The newest cubs won’t be on display in Asia Quest for several weeks.
