Melani the Sumatran tiger heaves herself painfully to her feet, walks to the fence and is hand-fed a few pieces of chicken cut into small chunks. She's skin and bone, but she eats less than a child might before returning to chew, like a sick domestic cat, on the grass.
There are less than 400 of Melani's kind still roaming the dwindling forests of Sumatra, and soon this zoo-bound specimen will also be dead, after spending most of her life in squalor in Surabaya Zoo.
She suffers from an unidentified wasting disease which means her food, even when it's minced, passes through her, almost entirely undigested.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/zoo-takes-terrible-toll-on-animals-20130526-2n5ct.html#ixzz2Wc0IQfPC
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