Snow romance: ‘Smitten’ tigers caught snuggling on camera at Scottish zoo

Leah Sinclair1 February 2021

Two Amur tigers have been spotted snuggling up and rolling around in the snow as they were caught on camera together for the first time.

In the footage, taken at Highland Wildlife Park, Dominika and Botzman can be seen together, with Dominka rolling on her back in the snow, which keepers have identified as an important behavioural cue that the pair are interested in each other.

Other important behavioural cues include calling and scent marking.

The park shared the video on Twitter, with the caption: “Botzman and Dominika, our Amur tigers, were recently introduced by our expert keepers and it's safe to say, so far they're kitten... oops, we mean smitten.

“Fingers crossed for the pitter patter of tiny stripy paws in the future.”

The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) staff carefully introduced Dominika, who was born at the park in May 2009, to Botzman last week, who arrived at the park in October 2020.

RZSS staff will now eagerly watch on to see if they remain together as they hope the pair will go on to have cubs.

A spokeswoman for the wildlife conservation charity said: "We are encouraged by how well the new couple are getting on so far and are hopeful they will have cubs in the future as part of the European endangered species breeding programme."

Amur tigers mate in the winter and the female usually gives birth to a litter of two or three cubs after a three and half month gestation period.

It’s estimated that only 500 Amur tigers, previously known as Siberian tigers, are currently left in the wild, with the species under threat due to habitat loss and poaching.

They were renamed in the 1990s due to their disappearance from the region and are now mainly found in isolated populations around the Amur river valley in the far east of Russia and on China's north east border.

The EAZA Ex-situ Programme (EEP), formerly known as European Endangered Species Programme, aims to conserve healthy populations of animals in captivity.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in