Cougar triplets born

The 4 week old puppies have just had their first veterinary check up

Cougar  triplets born 
The 4-week-old puppies have just had their first-ever veterinary check-up.

Our  Zoo's animal population has been enriched with a pair of triplets. The 4-week-old offspring underwent their first-ever general medical examination on Thursday. The health check revealed their sex and included a body weight measurement. The cougar cubs weigh 2220g, 2410g and 2150g and are highly developed males.

The cougar breeding pair have been residents of the zoo since 2019, and this is the second breeding of the five-year-old female and fourteen-year-old male together.

The cubs are being raised alone by their mother, who is feeding them on their mother's milk for now, but they will soon start eating a diet of meat.

Also known as the silver lion, the cougar is a very good jumper and an excellent short-distance runner. Once widespread throughout the Americas, it is highly adaptable and found in mountainous areas, coniferous forests, swamps, lowlands and tropical forests.

However, its numbers are now declining, with habitat loss and hunting being the main threats.

It is not picky about its diet: in fact it hunts everything from mice to moose, but its main prey is mainly deer and roe deer. It can catch and carry prey up to seven times its body weight.

Interestingly, despite their considerable body size and weight of up to 120 kilograms, cougars are not taxonomically classified as big cats, but as small cat