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| Female tiger cub "Gangsan" at Zootopia in Everland Resort, above, died on Jan. 8 after choking on food prepared by the facility. Courtesy of Everland Resort |
By Ko Dong-hwan
A seven-month-old tiger cub that was born and raised inside a Korean zoo has died on Jan. 8 after being fed and choking on its food.
The female cub named "Gangsan" ate beef left inside its indoor cell at Zootopia inside the large-scale theme park, Everland Resort, in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. Shortly after, a caretaker at the facility saw the cub suddenly beginning to move more lethargically than before and realized that it wasn't breathing normally.
The cub was immediately brought to a separate confinement area apart from its four siblings where it received cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Despite the procedure, the cub died at the scene.
Veterinarians at the zoo performed an autopsy on Gangsan and sent the results and its video records to a professor at Seoul National University's College of Veterinary Medicine for further confirmation of the cause of the cub's death. The following response came back to the zoo: respiratory failure due to sudden airway obstruction while eating.
The zoo said that the "unfortunate" incident occurred as the facility had been trying to raise the endangered cub as naturally as possible by having Gangsan's mother nurture the cub and improving the environment in which the animals are confined.
Gangsan was the youngest of five cubs born naturally at the zoo in June 2021. It was rare for a tiger to give birth to more than three cubs at once. Gangsan's parents had given birth to two other cubs in 2020.
Following Gangsan's death, the zoo declared three days until Jan. 11 as an official memorial period for the deceased cub. The facility also decided to adjust certain programs for visitors involving tigers that were scheduled for this month in commemoration of this year's Chinese zodiac symbol, the black tiger.
The zoo in 2003 was certified as an ex-situ conservation institution by the Korean Ministry of Environment and has been participating in the country's international programs to revive the species, still believed to live near the Tumen River on the China-North Korea border, since 2018.
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