Kemiri was recently euthanised after 22 years of a fantastic life at Adelaide Zoo where she was a much loved animal who truly loved humans. I have written about her before on the blog. Make sure to click through and read about the time she gave some humans a big scare.
After we left Adelaide, Kemiri got to do something which – knowing her as well as we did – I am certain pleased her enormously. She became the Big Cat who interacted with the humans. She was a Sumatran Tiger who firmly believed she was a human, due to her hand raising.
On the Facebook post where they announced her passing, people posted a lot of photos of that time they got to meet her. She touched so many people across her long life and turned a lot of people into passionate supporters of animal conservation. But she really would not care about that – she just loved being near to the humans.
I love that last photo. Nice post :)
She loved that spot, Rain – she could sit there and watch the humans and because she was so cute while she did it, all the humans would stop. I really cannot express how happy I was to hear she got to be around a lot more humans in her later years. :)
She looks lovely. Did she breed? Ok, I just read the link. She did not.
Sadly she never did manage to mate with a male tiger, Andrew. In some ways that might have been a blessing because I am not sure she would have known what to do with cubs. :) She was deeply gorgeous. :)
She was so beautiful. I always went to see the big cats first whenever I went to the zoo. The last couple of times I didn’t see her and assumed she was sleeping somewhere. I hadn’t known she was so old.
A good zoo can be wonderful for everyone.