In a small pocket of Chester, tigers are settling into their new home – complete with swimming pool, stream and heated rocks.
Sumatran tigers Fabi, eight, Kirana, nine, and their nine-month-old cubs Kasarna, Jaya and Topan are settling in to their state-of-the-art surroundings at Chester Zoo, which span more than 2,000sq m in size.
The Hutan Jungle Reserve is part of the zoo’s £40m Islands development - the biggest in UK zoo history - which began opening in phases earlier this year.
It has been designed by the zoo’s carnivore keepers, conservation and education teams and expert architects from Germany to closely mirror habitats in South East Asia.
In the planning since 2011, the Hutan Jungle Reserve boasts several mature trees as well as two 20-ft-tall wooden feeding poles fitted with pulleys that hoist large chunks of meat to the tops – encouraging the tigers to use all of their muscles and climb and work for their meals. There are breeding and cubbing dens and a tunnel cutting through the middle of the enclosure that visitors can walk through.
Curator of mammals Tim Rowlands said, “Our new Sumatran tiger exhibit is the ultimate big cat playground. There are lots of high vantage points for the tigers to climb up to; heated rocks to warm their muscles after a day of exploring; cosy dens and feeding poles for them to scale at mealtimes. Sumatran tigers have webbing between their toes making them superb swimmers and so it even has a pool and a stream for them to play in – it’s all part of us creating an area for them that’s a close as possible to their natural habitat.
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Sumatran tigers are found only on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra. They are the smallest of all tigers and also have the narrowest stripes. There they are often targeted by poachers who use their body parts as traditional medicine and much of their jungle habitat has been destroyed to make way for agriculture and palm oil plantations.
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