Posted: September 17th, 2010 - 6:37pm by Doug Powell

DH News Service: reports that an 11-year-old white tiger Arya and four-year-old Minchu have shown no improvement after suffering from severe bout of diarrhea following salmonella infection after eating meat.

This has forced veterinary doctors to change the course of antibiotics on Friday. Since the time they fell ill, both the tigers have not eaten anything.

M N Jayakumar, IFS officer and Member-Secretary of Zoo Authority of Karnataka, said eight tigers were unwell. But 41 tigers, which are in the safari area have no health problems. There are 22 lions and none have health complications although they were fed with chicken supplied by a particular contractor for Shivajinagar.

On the affected tigers, he said, E. coli and Salmonella bacteria present in chicken were the culprits.

The blood samples of nine tigers sent by BBP to the Institute of Animal Health and Veterinarian Biologicals (IVHVB) on Thursday reported salmonella bacteria for few samples, few samples had E. coli and in the rest had both bacteria in them.