The Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Centre for Tigers and Other Rare Animals in the village of Alekseyevka, in Russia’s Primorye Territory, constantly monitors the state of health of orphaned Amur tiger cubs which have been admitted into the centre earlier this year, and will be fostered here before their return to the wild.

The Rehabilitation Centre has been set up by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Severtsov Institute for Ecology and Evolution in association with the game warden force, Inspection Tiger.

On December 21-22, 2013, specialists of the Severtsov Institute, Inspection Tiger., the World Wildlife Fund and the Moscow Zoo performed a medical examination and vaccination of five cubs. Blood samples were taken from them during the checkup for a general clinical blood test, as well as for biochemical and serological tests.

The serological test has already been carried out at a Severtsov Institute laboratory, to detect antibodies to pathogens common in wild cats (such as the feline leukaemia virus, coronavirus enteritis, the calicivirus, feline panleukopenia, herpes (rhinotracheitis), and the influenza A virus).

Some of the animals have tested leukaemia-positive (in the Russian Far East’s wild tiger and leopard populations, the share of individuals seropositive for this virus is 3%), and positive for coronavirus enteritis (the Severtsov Institute has found no such cases in the wild so far, while according to other researchers (Goodrich et al., 2012), they account for 43%), for herpes (as compared with 6% in the wild) and for the influenza A virus (against 3%). Three of the examined cubs have tested calicivirus-positive (against 12% in the wild) and all five are seropositive for panleukopenia (the percentage is 50% in the wild, according to Severtsov Institute estimates, and 68% according to Goodrich (Goodrich et al., 2012)).

The test findings show that tigers currently undergoing a rehabilitation course at Alekseyevka have antibodies to some infectious pathogens common in large cat species of the Russian Far East.