Week 198 (8th June – 14th June 2007)

Madonna seduces 327 and he gets his first taste of wildebeest:

Madonna now turned her interest totally to the male tiger. From the beginning of this week, Madonna kept pacing along the fence of the quarantine camp, trying to attract the male tiger’s attention. Even though the male tiger did not always react to her, she seemed not to care. However, she kept her distance from TigerWoods. On Saturday morning, when Madonna was pacing along the fence of the quarantine camp, TigerWoods came from behind, but she quickly ran away. They chased each other to the back of the pepper tree and stood up on their hind legs, boxing each other. Then they ran into the old dam. Later, as if avoiding TigerWoods, Madonna didn’t go to the fence of the quarantine camp for a long time. In the afternoon, Madonna went to pace with the male tiger again. She then lay on the ground and rolled in front of the male tiger. Seeing this, TigerWoods seemed very excited and immediately ran to her. However, what he got was a slap from Madonna and TigerWoods had to walk off. Madonna went to the corner of the quarantine camp and sat down under the pepper tree. When she got up and paced along the fence of the quarantine camp again, TigerWoods had no courage to get close to her again. Finally the male tiger seemed to be moved by Madonna. On that afternoon he watched her and paced near the gate. After Madonna went to him, he followed her for a while until she went to the corner.

A wildebeest was shot for the tigers on Sunday afternoon. One of its hind legs was cut off for Cathay who was in the 4 ha camp, the other hind leg was put on a tree stump in the quarantine camp for the male tiger. The rest of the carcass was put in the 0.5 ha camp for TigerWoods and Madonna. Cathay, TigerWoods and Madonna was already quite familiar with this food. All of them began to eat immediately once they got it. However, the wildebeest was totally new food to the stud 327. How would he react to this food?

The stud 327 disappointed us in the beginning. After he went into the quarantine camp he just smelt around the ground near the cage but didn’t find the food. Maybe he was concentrating too much on the human beings. He didn’t go to his food until the end of the monitoring period. However, the next morning it was discovered that he had dragged the leg onto his bed in the breeding centre and almost finished it. He kept eating from it in the next two days till there were no meat left on the bone. The thick skin of the wildebeest was not a problem to him at all. He took it off from the leg like taking off a sock from a foot, then he finished all the meat between the skin and the bone. Actually this wildebeest leg which meat mass was about 20 kg was not even enough for him. He seemed already very hungry by the third day. A blesbok hind leg was given only to him on Wednesday afternoon which he finished immediately.