Veterinary session

The family of Felidae contains 36 species of wild cats, living world-wide scale except Australia and the Antarctica. 1 specie has been categorized as critically endangered, 6 species as endangered and 9 species as vulnerable, in the Red List of Threatened Species.

Racial preservation progams and the zoological parks are playing increasing role to prevent exctinction of these animals. Recent days for animals, living in captivity, there is a trend to maintain the best possible circumstances to increase the lifetime of those animals, and improve their comfort.

In my thesis I examined the circumstance’s of wild cats death, between 2006 and 2011, in 4 zoological parks, at Szeged Zoo, Sosto Zoo at Nyíregyháza, Budapest Zoo and in Le Parc des Félins in France.

I considered many factors, as the several vaccination and feeding protocols, the antiparasite treatments and the area of the animals.

There are 10 egzotic wild cat species in my examinations, the lynx (Lynx lynx), the snow leopard (Uncia uncia), the jaguar (Panthera onca), the leopard (Panthera pardus), the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), the lion (Panthera leo), the puma (Puma concolor), the serval (Leptailurus serval), the tiger (Panthera tigris) and the wildcat (Felis silvestris).

During the 6 years, 122 animals were died int he 4 zoological parks. The died animal’s age distribution was diverse. The youngests died as stillbirth cubs, the oldest animal was 24 years old when it died.

The origins of death were various also. There were viral and bacterial infections, traumatic cases and chronic organ diseases also.

The newborn cubs died usually in dehidration and cachexia, in the cases when the mother didn’t care about them, but there were some event when the older animals caused fatal injuries or the cubs had some kind of organ diseases.

In the examined period, the 55% of the dead animals were younger then 1 month, but at the same period 19% of the dead animals were older then 10 years.