Latest news, weather, high school sports for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

WALLACE -- If you think that human babies can be a handful, try raising four Siberian tiger cubs.  Just like their human counterparts, they cry, they teethe, and they're hungry all the time.

"There's a lot that's involved with taking care of the cubs," said Carrie Cramer, Director of the DeYoung Family Zoo.  For her and her fiance, zoo owner, Bud DeYoung, it's a labor of love to hand-rear the cubs.

To have four healthy cubs born in captivity is highly unusual, and their survival rate in the wild is even lower.

"In the wild, a mother, if she had three or four, probably the survivability would be fifty percent," said DeYoung.  It's because of low survival rates and poaching that Siberian tigers are nearly extinct in the wild.

"All tigers, no matter what subspecies it is, will be extinct by 2015," said Cramer.

"The Siberian tiger is the most endangered of any of the large carnivores in the world," DeYoung said.  "They claim over in Russia, there are only 200 left on the Russia-China border."

Successful breeding in zoos like DeYoung's is helping to keep the species alive, and the birth of the cubs has brought people of all ages from all over the country to see them and spend some hands-on time before they get too big.  Even though right now at a month old they only weigh six to eight pounds, Siberian tigers are the largest cats in the world, so in a year's time, the males will be 300 pounds.  When they reach their full growth at age five, they'll weigh 800 pounds.

DeYoung and Cramer encourage an interactive approach to the rearing of the animals, feeling that it builds a better rapport between the adult animals and humans.  So if you want an opportunity to see, touch, and possibly even hold one of these rare creatures, stop in at the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, home of the big cats.