A five-year-old tigress, Julie, collapsed to illness on Sunday at the Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park (SVZP) in Tirupati.
Julie was brought to SVZP from Nawab Wajid Ali Shah Zoological Park in Uttar Pradesh under an animal exchange programme on February 13 this year; and was later released in the display enclosure.
She sustained an injury on her left hind leg and the ventral part of the abdomen while playing in the first week of June. Since then, the big cat stopped consuming food properly, causing concern.
Julie’s health was reviewed by the Zoo Health Committee members, accompanied by Navin, a retired Deputy Director of Nehru Zoological Park, Hyderabad. However, she refused to cooperate with the medical team over the last twenty days and passed away on July 7 (Sunday).
The postmortem conducted on the carcass by a team of pathologists from SV Veterinary University found intestinal torsion as the cause of her death.
