India mourns the death of the tigress nicknamed "Super Mother"

Sadness this week amongst cat lovers in India over the sudden death of Kolarwali, a tigress famous throughout the giant Asian country for having given birth to a number of tiger cubs, thus allowing the breeding of these animals within the Punch Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.

Described by the local press as a "super mom" for having given birth to about 30 cubs, Kolarwale died at the age of 16 last weekend due to age-related intestinal problems.

A number of forest rangers held a funeral for her, and placed the remains in a funeral pyre decorated with wreaths, to cremate her body, according to Hindu rituals.

Social networks were filled with phrases that she remembered and express the grief of her fans.

"It was very popular in the reserve and in the local community, and everyone knew it existed," Binnish tiger reserve director Alok Mishra told AFP.

And he lived to adulthood twenty-five of the twenty-nine cubs she gave birth during her lifetime.

Its name means "with a collar", and it was named in the framework of a study project for this type of animal carried out in the natural park, when she herself was young.

Alok Mishra said that it "was the first tiger in the reserve to have a collar, which is a transmitter," explaining that this collar allowed "to monitor and know it well."

Visitors have come from all over India to try to catch a glimpse of Kolarwali in the central Indian region believed to have inspired the famous "Jungle Book" by English writer Rudyard Kipling, born in 1865 in Bombay.

A significant decline has been recorded, reaching very low levels, in the number of tigers in the world, due to over-hunting for valuable tiger skins, and habitat loss due to urbanization.

India is home to about 75% of the world's remaining tigers, and the number of these animals is about three thousand, according to the last census conducted in 2018.

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