Who says nature isn’t grand?  There has been a report out of Ukraine about a pretty amazing site in one of the museums and when you stop to think about it, it almost sounds like something out of a fairytale or even the Bible.  According to the Noviy Channel TV, there a female pig in Ukraine that is currently nursing three tiger cubs that were abandoned by their mother.  The cubs were born the week of September 16, 2008 at the zoo in Dnipropetrovsk but according to zoo officials, mama tiger wasn’t taking care of the kids.

The surrogate mother is on a pig farm in eastern Ukraine near the zoo and the zookeepers suggested that maybe she would nurse the tigers.  The three tiger cubs were introduced to the sow and have started nursing from the pig alongside the twelve adopted curly tailed siblings with no objection from the mother pig. 

The director of the zoo, Yuriy Aksenych commented on television that he feels the mother tiger has lost her feral instincts after being in captivity for so long and did not feel the need to help her progeny along in an effort to continue the species line.