A dog named Xiao Wang saw her litter of three puppies suddenly grow – by two tiger cubs.
The pair of Siberian tigers were introduced to the dog and her brood after their own mother refused to suckle them.
Keepers at Hangzhou Zoo in China became concerned about the cubs, which were born on November 10.
They brought in the dog from a nearby village to act as their surrogate mother while still nursing her own newborn puppies.
The task of looking after the pair is not an easy one for Xiao Wang.
While young Siberian tigers obviously do not eat as much as their adult counterparts – who need at least 9kg (20lb) of food each day to survive – their appetites are certainly greater than that of the average puppy.
On top of that, the dog’s natural young have to fight their way towards their mother, as the bigger tiger cubs often clamber on top of them for first dibs on the milk.
This is not the first time that Hangzhou Zoo has employed a dog as a ‘mother’ to abandoned tiger cubs.
In 2010, a tiger cub called ‘Lucky’ was introduced to a litter of dogs after its mother refused to feed it.
And other cross-species adoption has also been known to take place, with or without encouragement by zookeepers.
In 2005, a newborn squirrel was discovered in Seattle having been adopted by a pregnant papillon dog called Mademoiselle Giselle.
In the same year Owen, a one-year-old orphaned hippo, was taken in by Mzee, a 130-year-old giant tortoise, in a Kenyan zoo.
Golden retriever Isabella adopted three white Bengal tiger cubs on a US ranch in 2008 – although they were separated for the dog’s own safety when the big cats reached a year old.
Siberian tigers are the biggest cats in the world, and live mainly in eastern Russia – although some are found in China and North Korea.
They are critically endangered, with only between 400 and 500 existing in the wild – although recent studies suggest that these numbers are stable.
In the wild, Siberian tigers live alone and are aggressively territorial.
They usually give birth to between two and six cubs, and females tend to raise the young with little or no help from the males.
Cubs cannot hunt until they are around 18 months old, and remain with their mothers until they are between two and three years old.
