A black panther that was rescued last week after being spotted prowling the rooftops of a town in the north of France has been stolen from the zoo. The owner is still at large.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Chibane
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Police and zoo employees in the French town of Maubeuge, near the Belgian border, say the animal's pen had signs of a break-in on Tuesday morning and that the panther was gone. The animal was brought to the zoo following its rescue last week.
Staff noted that the security door of the enclosure had been opened with force. The authorities said they were reviewing video security footage for clues.
The panther was to be moved to a center for rehabilitating wild animals in the coming days.
Maubeuge Mayor Arnaud Decagy said the panther was a target of thieves.
"You would have had to know that it was located in that particular enclosure," he said. "It was in health and administrative quarantine, so no visitor could have seen it."
Zoo employees are concerned for the young panther's health, "which is rather delicate because it lacks strength," said the mayor. The cat is only a few months old.
A Wild Story
Firefighters rescued the cat last Wednesday after it was spotted prowling rooftops in the town of Armentieres. It had escaped through an open window of a private apartment that is presumed to be its home. The panther was being kept illegally as a pet.
Authorities believe the cat's owner, who is wanted by the police and has not returned to the apartment since the animal's capture, escaped through the same window to avoid being charged with illegally harboring a wild animal. Decagny said that, if caught, they could face charges of endangering the public, punishable with up to a year in prison and fines up to €15,000 euros ($16,500).
More tigers now live in cages than in the wild
Threatened by illegal poaching and habitat loss, fewer than 4,000 tigers remain in the wild. But among zoos and human homes, their numbers are on the rise.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS/L. Jie
Admired, feared and on the brink of extinction
Tigers are secretive, solitary animals that need a lot of room to move. From lush jungles in Malaysia and Indonesia to high mountains in Bhutan and mangrove forests in India, the habitats tigers roam in search of food are being lost to deforestation and development. Much of what remains is fragmented into chunks of isolated forest surrounded by roads, farms, towns and cities.
Cages, backyards a far cry from Asian forests, savannas
With their sleek, stripey coats, piercing stare and adorable cubs, tigers are highly sought-after as exotic pets and zoo animals. This is especially true in the US — according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the total number of tigers in the country "likely exceeds the numbers found in the wild." It's estimated there could be from 2,000 to 5,000 tigers living in the state of Texas alone.
Only half of tiger cubs survive in the wild. Mothers may refuse to feed their offspring or abandon them for unknown reasons. In captivity, zoos have overcome this by getting female dogs to takeover the feeding of tiger cubs. The dogs don't seem to know the difference between their own offspring and the tiger cubs, which take around the same amount of time to wean.
Image: dapd
Three subspecies already lost to extinction
There are nine subspecies of tiger, of which six survive today. The differences are mostly a reflection of extreme climatic changes over thousands of years. The Siberian — or Amur — tiger (pictured), for example, is bigger and hairier than other subspecies. This means it can retain heat in the frosty Siberian wilderness, as it has a smaller surface area relative to its overall mass.
Image: picture-alliance/All Canada Photos/F. Pali
Tigers and lions live side-by-side, right? No!
While the six surviving tiger subspecies don’t have a lot of genetic variation, they are each uniquely adapted to their habitats — which are in Asia, not Africa. Some live in tropical forests, others in dry forests, some in marshes and wetlands and some at elevations of 3,000 meters (10,000 feet). That makes it more difficult to relocate them to different parts of the world to boost numbers.
Although far from being the only issue facing the great cat, climate change poses a major threat to their habitat. A recent study, published in Science of the Total Environment, predicted that sea level rise in the Sundarbans — a mangrove forest stretching across India and Bangladesh — will likely decimate the local Bengal tiger population, the only subspecies adapted to living in mangroves.
