Cage size matters as tiger mating fails

Dudley Zoo tigress Sarah is coming home to the Black Country after failing to find love in London.

Her failed mating mission has left London Zoo drawing up plans for a new £5 million enclosure with more room for romance.

Sarah, a 14-year-old Sumatran tigress, was dispatched to London Zoo last summer to woo 11-year-old Lumpur as part of a breeding programme for the endangered species. But romance failed to blossom and the pair had to be separated after fighting broke out between them.

London Zoo is now set to spend £5 million on a new big cat enclosure with bosses claiming the existing paddock is too small.

However Dudley Zoo chief executive Peter Suddock today hit out at the claims and defended his tigress.

He said: "We have had a fabulous success rate with Sarah here.

"She has produced eight cubs in five years which have gone all over the world. We are delighted to be getting her back.

"Our enclosure is about the same size as the current enclosure in London so I don't think the enclosure was the problem – I think it was a grumpy old man problem.

"Five million pounds is an awful lot of money.

"We are getting a new lion enclosure for £150,000 in Dudley so I'm surprised the enclosure in London is going to cost that much."

The new lion enclosure, which was approved by Dudley Council in 2006, will be completed in the spring.

London Zoo's Lumpur had been unable to breed with another female, Raika, despite sharing a pound with her for eight years.

Lumpur's former pound pal Raika, who also failed to attract the tiger's interest, will now return to London from Dudley to complete the swap.

Zoo bosses consider her a more likely mate than Sarah because while she did not arouse any amorous passions, at least she and Lumpur did not come to blows.

Sarah's former mate at Dudley, Filon, died earlier this year, aged 18.

The breeding drive comes with the numbers of Sumatran tigers diminishing rapidly worldwide.

Only an estimated 400 survive in the wild on an island in Indonesia.