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Tatyana the Tigress: Kaliningrad's Secret Snowball-Rolling Star

It remains unclear how Tatyana came to embrace the unusual hobby.

An Amur tigress residing in the Kaliningrad zoo has found the silver lining behind Russia's long, dark winters: snowballs worthy of the plumpest snowmen.

When giant snowballs first started popping up in Tatyana the tigress' enclosure, zoo employees assumed their colleagues had just been having some fun with the feline.

"When we first saw the snowballs — including some that could be used to build snowmen — we were convinced that they were the work of zoologists who had made them to entertain the animals," Yekaterina Mikhailova, the zoo's press secretary, was quoted as saying by Gazeta.ru on Sunday.

Ultimately, the veil of secrecy was lifted by surveillance footage. Tatyana has been caught on video during her snowball rolling frenzies, which only occur at night, according to zookeepers.

It remains unclear how Tatyana came to embrace this unusual hobby. Typhoon the tiger, another resident of the Kaliningrad zoo, has not shown any interest in adopting Tatyana's pastime.

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