At Novosibirsk zoo in Russia, the adorable cat Darka took on a parenting role and started taking care of Kiara, a ligresse. A liger is the cub of a tiger and a lion.
When Kiara’s mother no longer produced any milk, the staff at the zoo had to feed her with a bottle. She managed to get through a bottle of milk every three hours! Zoo guardian, Roza Solovieva, took Kiara home to take better care of her, under the watchful eye of Darka.
These two bonded instantly and Darka was seen licking and taking care of Kiara. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for Kiara to start showing predatory behaviour, this was a sign that she needed to go back to her mother.
“The bond between a mother and her new-born is extremely important and we try to keep them together as much as possible, but in this case we had to take drastic measures. Darka’s maternal instinct took over and she began treating Kiara as one of her children, it was nice to see. After about a week we started to introduce meat to Kiara and then suddenly she began to develop her predatory instincts, so we knew it was time to take Kiara to her mother.” Says Roza.
A beautiful story!
Source and Photo Credit: Daily Mail
