While this year Crimea has mainly made news headlines for political reasons, a zoo on the peninsula is now celebrating the arrival of 10 Amur tiger cubs this year.
The cubs, which belong to an extremely rare tiger species, were born to three different mothers at the Taigan safari park in Crimea, tabloid LifeNews reported Thursday.
Two of the tigers were born just days after Crimean residents voted to join Russia in March, leading zookeepers to name the cubs "Referendum" and "Spring," the report said.
The latest additions to the park came two months ago, taking the number of tigers in the zoo up to 35 — the largest number of Amur tigers in captivity in Europe.
But looking after the animals is by no means cheap: an adult tiger needs about 7 kilograms of meat a day to survive.
Amur tigers are considered to be an endangered species, with the World Wildlife Fund estimating that only 450 individuals are left in the wild — primarily in Russia's far eastern Primorye and Khabarovsk regions.
Authorities in Khabarovsk announced last Thursday that they were planning to carry out a census of the endangered animals this winter.
