T-4 has become the world’s first feline reared in captivity. T-4 is a five-year-old orphaned semi-wild tigress who was shifted to wilds to birth two cubs, at the Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Madhya Pradesh.
Among two cubs, one was spotted by a PTR official. PTR had lost all its tigers in 2009 and the big cats were subsequently reintroduced to revive population.
But now at PTR, big cats toll number has risen to 13 after two translocated wild tigresses had delivered eight cubs, out of which six had survived.
But these two were not hand-reared and shifted, like T-4, the world’s first feline reared in captivity.
This is for the first time that a semi-wild tigress shifted to the wilds has adjusted to new environs and begotten cubs.
In May 2006, while T-4 was born in the Kanha Tiger Reserve (KTR), her mother had died within few days after her birth. And on March 27 last year, T-4 tigress was carted out to PTR and released into the wilds.
The major worries about the tigress’ survival in the wild were that it was hand-reared in an enclosure and had not easily adjusted to stay in jungle where she might face a lone translocated tiger, and mated.
But T-4 is so active that she had easily learnt to pick up the ropes quickly and started going for kills in the deep jungle. Hand-reared tigress along with her two cubs that delivered last December has now started moving out of their den.
