Lions and other Big Cats

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Best clips of "The BLT" - Tiger, bear and lion live together as friends, the trio is inseparable - Baloo the black bear, Shere Khan the Bengal and Leo the African lion tiger known as "The BLT": The bear, the lion and the tiger. They came to Noah's Ark in 2001, after they were discovered by police officers in a basement of an Atlanta home during raid. All three cubs were frightened, malnourished, and infected with internal and external parasites when the Georgia Department of Natural Resources brought them to Noah’s Ark.

 

 

 

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-60657698

Ukraine: India doctor stranded with a jaguar and panther

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3 days ago

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IMAGE SOURCE,GIRIKUMAR PATIL

Image caption,

Girikumar Patil bought a jaguar and a panther from a zoo 20 months ago

For more than a week, an Indian doctor in war-torn Ukraine has been holed up in a basement at home with his pet big cats - a black panther and a jaguar.

Girikumar Patil, who bought the two cats from the Kyiv zoo, says he will not leave home without his pets. He has lived for over six years in Severodonetsk, a small town located in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

After the war began, Mr Giri, who is single, has been stepping out of his cramped basement only to buy food for his cats - the male jaguar is 20 months old and the female panther is a six-month-old cub - after the curfew ends early in the morning. (The jaguar is a rare hybrid between a male leopard and a female jaguar, he said.)

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So far, Mr Giri said he had bought 23kg of sheep, turkey and chicken meat from neighbouring villages at prices four times higher than normal.

"My big cats have been spending nights in the basement with me. There has been a lot of bombing happening around us. The cats are scared. They are eating less. I can't leave them," Mr Patil, 40, told the BBC.

"This is the second war I am living through. But this is scarier."

Mr Giri said he was earlier living in Luhansk, where Russian-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian troops since 2014 despite a ceasefire agreement. During the fighting in the region, his home and an Indian restaurant he opened in the area were destroyed, he said.

 

He then moved to Severodonetsk, about 100km (62 miles) away, bought a new place, began practising medicine and bought his new pets.

"Now I am stuck in a war zone. This time I am really worried. My parents have been calling me and asking me to come home, but I can't leave the animals," Mr Patil said.

Mr Patil, who hails from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, said that he spent $35,000 (£26,460) to buy the panther and the jaguar from the Kyiv zoo about 20 months ago. He said the zoo allowed private sales of animals provided the owner had enough space to keep them - Mr Patil showed the birth certificates of the animals supplied by the zoo.

Mr Patil said he arrived in Ukraine in 2007 to study medicine. Since 2014, he has been a practising orthopaedic doctor and now works in a government hospital in Severodonetsk which was shut after the war began. He said he also does private practice.

IMAGE SOURCE,GIRIKUMAR PATIL

Image caption,

Mr Patil says he will not return to India without his pets

In Severodonetsk, Mr Patil lives in a six-room two-storey house with a small enclosure for the animals. He said he spent most of his earnings on his pets - he also has three dogs - and tries to raise additional funds through his YouTube channels where he posts videos of his two big cats for some 85,000 subscribers.

"I have always been fascinated with big cats since watching my favourite southern Indian film star, Chiranjeevi, in a film with leopards," he said.

The son of a bank manager father and a school teacher, Mr Patil said he has always been an "animal lover", and kept dogs, cats and birds at home.

After high school and college, Mr Patil also dabbled in acting, doing small parts in Telugu soaps. In Ukraine, he said, he had done parts as a "foreign" character in half-a-dozen local films and series.

The border with Russia was barely 80km from home, Mr Patil said, but it was difficult to reach there because of Russian forces in the region. There had been intermittent power cuts and internet breakdowns in his neighbourhood, but he was able to post video messages on social media regularly.

"I am the only Indian out here, and at night I am alone in the neighbourhood. Most of my neighbours have moved to nearby villages. I am going to hold out," he said.

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https://www.newsweek.com/lions-tigers-kyiv-sanctuary-arrive-poland-after-russian-invasion-1684632

 

Ukraine Sanctuary's Lions, Tigers Arrive in Poland Amid Russian Attacks

BY KATIE WERMUS ON 3/3/22 AT 12:35 PM EST

 

Animals from a sanctuary east of Kyiv, Ukraine, made it safely to Poland after the owner had asked for help getting the animals away from the military conflict as Russia's assault on the country continues.

A truck carrying six tigers, six lions two caracals and an African wild dog made a two-day journey to Poland to escape the war zone and arrived safely on Thursday, a Polish zoo official said, according to Reuters.

The Save Wild animal sanctuary, near the capital city of Kyiv, started evacuating some of the animals following reports of heavy artillery fighting in the area. The owner of the sanctuary had asked Zoo Poznań in western Poland for assistance in getting the animals across the border.

Speaking of the truck's journey, Zoo Poznań spokesperson Malgorzata Chodyla told Reuters, "They had to go a long way around to avoid Zhytomyr and other bombardment zones. They had to turn back many times, because all the roads were blown up, full of holes, impossible to pass with such cargo, which is why it took so long."

 

As the journey began, the Polish zoo had almost "lost hope" after finding out that as the truck was trying to leave with the animals, it was surrounded by Russian tanks, the zoo said Tuesday on Facebook.

"We spent the night waiting for the news, fearing the worst," the zoo said. But it later found out the animals would be making it safely to their destination after the drivers had made it past the occupation line.

All of the animals "miraculously survived transport" through regions of intense bombing and firing, the zoo said on Facebook. However, the zoo is concerned about a 17-year-old tiger and said all of the animals were exhausted.

The animals are resting at Zoo Poznań but may head further west. A sanctuary in Belgium said it would take in the six lions and the African wild dog, Chodyla said, according to Reuters.

 

The Polish zoo is working with Ukrainian zoos and rescue partners to evacuate as many animals as possible. Once the Polish zoo finishes its operation to evacuate animals in Kyiv, it will be providing supplies and help to a zoo in Lviv.

Meanwhile, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals urged people leaving Ukraine because of the military conflict to not leave their animals behind. "Just like humans fleeing from war, companion animals will be scared and stressed and are dependent on their human guardians for comfort and security," PETA said on its website.

Current regulations for bringing companion animals into the EU are next to impossible to implement, given the current situation in Ukraine. So countries such as Romania, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovenia, Hungary and Poland have relaxed their restrictions on pets, making to make it easier for refugees to bring them along.

Update 03/03/22, 1:35 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with more background and information.

A truck carrying six lions, six tigers, two caracals and an African wild dog from a sanctuary east of Kyiv, Ukraine, reached Poland on Thursday. Above, an Amur tiger bathes in a pool at Kyiv's zoo on September 17, 2010.SERGEI SUPINSKY/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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Lovely image. Our bro (or sis) is doing Ishnaan....lol.

 

Bhul chuk maaf

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Meet Messi the Puma, now unlike most big cats that exist in the wild or in zoos, this big cat, lives in a 1 bedroom apartment in Russia. Messi was born in captivity at a zoo in Russia, but suffered from various health problems at just three months old.

During his stay at the zoo, Messi was kept in a very small enclosure and was malnourished, which caused him to develop muscle weakness, rickets which is a degenerative bone disease and a urinary tract infection. The zoo decided that because pumas were not native to Russia, they could not simply release it into the wild, and because of it’s illnesses, that prevented him from living in another zoo or animal sanctuary. So they had planned to euthanize him.

A couple by the name of Aleksandr and Mariya Dmitriev, heard about the sickly cub, and after talking with other puma breeders and learning everything about the maintenance and care of the animal, they took a leap of faith and approached the zoo about adopting it. And to their surprise, the zoo agreed!

 

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