The tiger in the picture below is called Ty. Let's call it Tai.
Ty lives in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Florida, USA.
In 2013, Ty was 17 years old. He had a physical problem and hadn't eaten for about two weeks. Vernon Yates was its breeder. He raised Tai as his son. Seeing that he was very sick, he was worried, so he took him to the vet immediately.
Seventeen years old is human puberty, but for tigers, it is too old. Tai is already an old man. Generally speaking, tigers living in the wild can only live for ten years at most.
The doctor immediately gave him a gastroscopy, and the whole process was very smooth. Tai was very good, and did not bother at all. In the words of a doctor, "This tiger is a very, very, very, very cute cat". There is no exaggeration. The original story uses 4 very words.
(Image source: dailymail)
During the gastroscopy, the doctor found Tai had a huge hair ball in his stomach, so he arranged an open operation for him.
There are four fur balls in total, and they are really big. After taking them out, put them on the scale. Boy, about 3.6 kg. The four fur balls together are as big as a basketball.
Before, there was a long haired cat in England who was also blocked by fur. He could not eat or drink, and almost died. Finally, he arranged an operation to remove the fur ball. This cat's fur ball is 215 g (0.25 kg).
It's a big fur ball for a cat. Compared with a tiger, it's nothing. Only 14 cat fur balls can support one tiger fur ball.
After the operation, Tai needs time to recover, but he has a keeper who loves him very much. Don't worry about this problem.
The question we are more concerned about may be: Why do tigers spit hair balls?
Domestic cats spend 25% - 30% of their time a day licking and grooming their hair. The cat's tongue is like a barbed hook. It is easy to lick it and then roll its hair into its stomach.
Scientists found that on average, a short haired cat loses 28g/kg of hair every year, and 2/3 of the hair is found in feces.
If you don't eat too much hair, you can excrete it through feces. But for some cats that are easy to lose their hair, if you lick too much hair, it is likely to gather in the digestive tract and form hair balls.
Tigers are also felines. It is normal for them to lick and comb their hair. Their tongues, like cats, also have barbed mastoids.
Especially tigers like Tai, who have nothing to do with human care, will spend more time licking their fur (similarly, indoor cats will also spend more time licking their fur than stray cats).
As long as there is fur in the stomach, if you eat too much, you will become a hairball, and the small hairball will spit out, and the big hairball may be blocked.
The hair ball below was spit out by a lion. It should be called a hair stick. After all, it is not spherical.
Not only Tiger Tai, but also other big cats can't spit out their hair balls.
The leopard in the picture below is about to spit its hair ball, and was caught.
In 2015, a Colorado veterinarian took out a fur ball from the stomach of a young African lion. Coincidentally, its fur ball was also about 3.6 kg.
If you want to find the pictures of tigers spitting fur balls on the Internet, you will find that it is very difficult. Maybe it's because the king of beasts has an idol burden. He usually spits hair balls quietly and won't be captured casually.
If you want to find evidence for "a tiger is just an enlarged cat", then hair spitting must be counted as one.
Finally, I wish you all good luck in the Year of the Tiger!
reference:
1、 Do Big Cats Get Hairballs？
https：//www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/animals-lions-cats-health-pets
2、 The cat‘s me-OUCH： Ty the tiger has giant basketball-sized HAIRBALL surgically removed from his stomach
https：//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329397/Ty-tiger-basketball-sized-hairball-surgically-removed-stomach.html
3、 The effects of diets varying in fibre sources on nutrient utilization， stool quality and hairball management in cats
https：//onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpn.13289
4、 Influence of the dietary fibre levels on faecal hair excretion after 14 days in short and long-haired domestic cats
https：//onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/vms3.6
Produced by: Popular Science China
Produced by: Su Chengyu
Supervised by: Computer Network Information Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences
(The source pictures indicated in this article have been authorized)
