A liger that was adopted by an animal rescue center in Pingtung County shortly after it was born is now nine years old, which is rare for the mixed species, the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology’s Rescue Center for Animals said.
A liger refers to the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger.
A-biao (阿彪) came to the center in 2010 after the Council of Agriculture seized it from a local farmer.
Photo courtesy of the Pingtung Rescue Center
The farmer had put a male African lion and a female Bengal tiger into a pen together and bred them “for amusement” in contravention of the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), the council said.
Three cubs were produced from the litter, one of which died immediately after birth and another which died a week later, but A-biao survived, despite having a deformed spine due to missing DNA, the center said.
Under the care of center staff, A-biao has survived to the age of nine, but he has had a difficult life, the center said, adding that it hopes A-biao serves as a reminder about the need to respect wildlife.
“The long-term expenses for raising [A-biao], including the cost of medical care and other resources, has been no small sum. Conservation is also getting costlier. Now more than ever we need the public’s help,” the center said.
Any donations would be put toward improving facilities for the animals, it added.
A-biao, like most ligers, is larger than either of his parents. He was born with a spine shaped like an “s,” a tail that was missing bones and an inoperative left hind leg, the center said.
University professor Pei Jai-chyi (裴家騏) said that many of the animals at the center are exotic animals that were smuggled into the country and later abandoned, such as orangutans, sun bears and African spurred tortoises.
Taiwan was once notorious for animal smuggling, but has since become known for its conservation work, he said.
However, funding for conservation has been shrinking over the past decade, he added.
The center receives 95 percent of its funding from the Forestry Bureau, which has slashed its conservation budget more than 30 percent over the past 10 years, he said, adding that the center relies on two vets, two assistant vets and 17 caretakers to look after 1,500 animals.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,