Hope died last month. Many of you won't be aware of this but I learned it while surfing the web this week. Hope was a two-and-half year old South Asian tiger cub who'd been sent from a zoo in China along with three others to learn to live wild in a South African game reserve. There are only about 100 of these tigers - now 99 - left alive. The Chinese Government is trying to save them in time to reintroduce them to a grand fanfare at the 2008 Olympic Games. Hope won't make it to the Olympics but had been doing quite well in hunting for his dinner, until recent weeks when he developed a fungal infection. Despite medical treatment, he died of pneumonia and a heart attack. A post-mortem revealed that the Hope's heart was much smaller than it should have been for a tiger cub of his age - quite probably the effect of having been one of the tenth generation of tigers born into captivity.
So, Hope died. And with his death, just one more species of animal moves a step nearer extinction.
So what?
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