Wednesday 2 October 2013

In a first, DNA tests on tigers done to establish relationship - Economic Times

Debarjun Saha | 20:33 |

NAGPUR: Perhaps for the first time in the country, tigers have been DNA-profiled through their blood samples to establish their relationship. The DNA analysis done at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, shows that three tigers now kept in a specially made enclosure in Pench Tiger Reserve are, are in fact, siblings.

The three tigers — two females named Sukhwasi and Ganeshpipri and a male named Bhangaram — were rescued separately within a gap of a few days and at a little distance away from each other at Gondpipri in Dhaba forest range in Chandrapur in September 2009 when their mother went missing. They were named after the villages from where they were rescued.

The six-month-old cubs were shifted to Bor Wildlife Sanctuary in November 2009 with an aim to release them back in the wild after training them with hunting skills through live feeds. As the area in Bor, where the tigers were kept was too small, these animals were taken to a bigger enclosure in Pench Tiger Reserve in May-June this year.

Prior to the tigers being shifted to Pench, veterinary doctors had taken their blood samples. No other rescued or abandoned tigers have been thus DNA tested. There have been reports about DNA tests being conducted earlier in Panna (MP), Buxa ( West Bengal) and Manas ( Assam) tiger reserves for genetic assessment as well for census purposes. But none of them were apparently done by testing blood samples as only body parts and scat are normally sent for analysis.

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