On 22nd March last year, Flamingo Land was very excited to welcome the birth of 3 Sumatran Tiger cubs. With their first birthday we have taken a look back at their first year with us:-

22nd March – 3 Sumatran Tiger cub triplets were born to Surya their mother (meaning Sunshine in Indonesian) and Bawa their father (which is a small island off the coast of Sumatra).

6th April – The cubs opened their eyes for the very first time.

13th May – The vet visited them to weigh, sex, microchip and vaccinate them. We were therefore now in a position to name them, and selected Kuasa for the boy (meaning strong and powerful), Mentari for one of the females (meaning sun, in honour of her mother’s name) and Bulan for the smaller girl(meaning moon). Kuasa was weighed in at 7.4kg, Mentari at 7.03kg and Bulan at 6.3kg.

15th May – They were first introduced to their father, though as males do not get particularly involved with the rearing of their cubs in the wild, they were not placed within the same part of the enclosure.

21st May – The triplets met the public for the first time, as they were given access to the outside sector of their enclosure for a press day and photoshoot!

6th June – This was the date that they were first observed eating meat.

14th June – This was their second visit from the vet and they were weighed again. Kuasa was now 11.7kg, Mentari 10.6kg and Bulan 9.7kg.

2nd November – They started to lose their milk teeth from the beginning of November.

8th December – They were filmed by ITV with their aerial drone camera.

January 2015 – They were introduced to another sector of their enclosure, where the pond is located. Their father had previously occupied this side and so this gave the cubs the opportunity to explore new smells and see themselves in the water!