A one-year-old Royal Bengal tiger has died at the Nandankanan Zoo, due to an infection in its rectum. The death of the tiger comes three days after two rare four-horned antelopes were bitten to death by stray dogs that entered their enclosure at the zoo.Sources at the zoo said the tiger had developed complications in its rectal sphincter due to an infection. Zoo officials reportedly attempted to treat the animal within its enclosure, but had failed in their attempts to do so. The tiger was hospitalised a week back, sources said, adding that doctors at the veterinary hospital had even operated on the animal, but there had been no subsequent improvement in its condition. For the past two days, the tiger had stopped eating, and sources pointed out that the Nandankanan Zoo officials had refused to seek medical help from experts at the College of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry.Zoo director S K Sinha, however, claimed that the tiger had been weak right from its birth. Stressing that there was no negligence on the part of Zoo officials in treating the tiger, Sinha pointed out that veterinarians at the zoo had operated on it. The exact cause of death will be determined during a postmortem.With this death, Nandankanan’s tiger population has dropped to 31, of which 20 are Royal Bengal tigers while the rest are white tigers.
