19 year old tiger dies at the Calgary Zoo
Posted Oct 8, 2014 12:09 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A long time resident of the Calgary Zoo, 19 year old Amur tiger “Kita” has died from old age.
Zoo officials made the announcement on their website Wednesday morning.
Spokesperson Trish Exton-Parder says the death had been an expected one, Kita had been experiencing several symptoms including arthritis.
The average life span of a female Amur tiger is only 14 years old.
She first arrived in Calgary, from Toronto, at the feisty age of three in 1999.
“She has quite a history here, we’re choosing to report her passing in a way that we can celebrate some pretty incredible statistics,” said Exton-Parder, referring to the breeding program in place.
Kita had 5 healthy cubs, 8 grandkids, 5 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great-grandchildren.
“At the end of the day, 21 descendants residing in North America and Europe, which is a really great story and demonstrates how the species survival program works for some of the species we have here,” she said. “That works out to 4 per cent of the entire captive population for Amur tigers which is pretty remarkable. It’s a success story and shows the role zoos are playing today with some of these endangered species.”
One of her descendants lives as far away as the Czech Republic.
Curator Colleen Baird tells 660News there’s a real somber mood right now around the exhibit.
“A lot of the staff that cared for her directly were hit quite hard,” said Baird. “We had been monitoring her age and how that affects you when you get older.”
Baird says it’s an all around sad event but not one that was unexpected.
“She had recovered from some significant medical issues a few years ago, so we were quite happy she was able to stay with us for another 4 years.”
There are only 350 Amur tigers left in the wild.
The cats are indigenous to Russia and China.
Three tigers remain at the Calgary Zoo: Katja (Kita’s daughter), Kyra (Kita’s granddaughter) and Baikal.
