They were allowed in the same place for only four days, but everyone around them immediately knew that they were made for each other.
Officials from the Little Rock Zoo and the city went to great lengths last year to make Suhana, a 5-year-old female, and Liku, a 9-year-old male, comfortable together, hoping that the two Malayan tigers would take a liking to each other.
The matchmaking paid off. The zoo announced Thursday that four Malayan tiger cubs were born there earlier this month.
“It’s not common to have this kind of success on the first try and just so quickly,” said Debbie Thompson, the zoo’s carnivore curator.
The tiger keepers have seen the babies - born Nov. 12 - only through a closed-circuit camera placed in a birthing den made for their mother. It was less than a month ago that zookeepers began to suspect that Suhana was pregnant, but they weren’t 100 percent sure.
“They noticed Suhana getting fat, and it seemed like her mammary glands were starting to get milk,” zoo spokesman Susan Altrui said. “They were able to test her urine to see if she was pregnant, but even then you can get false positives. So while we had a feeling, we really didn’t know for sure until recently.”
Tigers gestate for about 104 days, or about 3½ months.
“We’re really anxious to put hands on the babies,” Thompson said. “Their eyes should be opening in the next few days, and they should start coming out of the den over the next few weeks. But right now we have to rely on the video and on what we hear from the other side of the den.”
Thompson said the tiger cubs don’t yet have names and won’t until the keepers know their sexes and get a feel for their personalities.
One thing is sure, Thompson said: This was a success for the tiger-dating service that selected the two parents as a match.
A few years ago, the Little Rock Zoo applied under a national species-survival plan to be allowed to find mates for its two male tigers, Liku and his brother, Intan. Zoo officials entered the male tigers’ ages, weights, personality characteristics, genetic markers and histories into a database of possible tiger mates.
It turned out that two sister tigers at the Baton Rouge Zoo, Suhana and Nazira, were ready to mate, and their genetic backgrounds made the two sets of tigers probable matches.
In May 2012, Intan was sent to Baton Rouge, and Suhana traveled to Little Rock. Thompson said Thursday that as far as she knows, the Baton Rouge couple has not yet successfully mated.
The Intan-Nazira and Liku-Suhana pair-ups were two of 10 tiger couples allowed to mate under the survival plan, Thompson said.
“It can be a scary and sometimes deadly thing when you have two big carnivores together and if it doesn’t work out,” Thompson said. “Liku and Suhana … all of their interactions from the very beginning were positive. We had very high hopes. They would call to one another and were very interested in smelling the other’s scent.”
She said over the course of about four days, the tigers mated 59 times. All the while, zoo staff members were waiting nearby with fire hoses and air horns to separate the two in case things got violent.
“They both got a few scratches the first day, but it was more because they weren’t used to being able to see each other in person and not through a fence,” she said.
As part of the citywide sales-tax increase approved in 2011, the city set aside money for the Little Rock Zoo to spend on capital improvements. The Little Rock Board of Directors approved a $228,000 expenditure in November 2012 to upgrade the tiger enclosure with better landscaping and a heart shaped pool for swimming, but most importantly with two enclosed sides.
The double enclosure made it possible for the two tigers to meet slowly and to be separated quickly if necessary. Now the enclosures allow the couple to be separated while Suhana raises the cubs.
After giving birth, female tigers often become protective of the cubs, while male tigers can become aggressive or violent with cubs, and even injure or kill them.
The zoo plans to keep the four babies for three or four years before entertaining requests to transfer them to other zoos, Altrui said.
“It’s kind of cool that people will get to see them grow up,” she said. “They’ll have to wait awhile to get a first look, but people will be able to see them essentially grow into adult tigers.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 11/22/2013