In a comment below, reader Michael calls attention to two YouTube videos of the D.C. zoo’s tiger-cub swim test, and I thought I’d post them for grins (and education, but mostly grins):
This shorter clip shows the underwater view of poor Bandar being heaved into the drink. It’s clear that this animal, like so many mammals, clearly has an instinct to dog-paddle when first hurled into water. While that might be simply a natural reaction to being in an aqueous medium, I can’t help but speculate that it’s at least partly the result of natural selection: those ancestors that dog-paddled in such situations were the ones that survived.
The test of this would be to take a cat (or other mammal) which never could have experienced a fall into water, either in its present form or recent ancestry, and see if it still dog-paddles. But I know of no such mammals. (Maybe desert rodents? For I know that other rodents dog-paddle too.)
The funny thing is that many human babies paddles too when they are introduced to water.
A mammal as well.
There’s something more than a bit incongruous about trying to catch a tiger with a butterfly net….
b&
There’s an Addams family cartoon in there somewhere.
I thought so too….you notice they don’t show one being caught?
Dog-paddling? Surely not.
Very unwise swimming teachers. They should go gently and slowly into the water themselves with the cub in the arms and comfort it.Be a teaching mother. So many people had a nightmarish first experience with water because of such thoughtless brutes.
They’re not swimming teachers ; they’re swimming testers. Big difference. For whatever reason (probably well-founded ; I’ve known that itgers swim naturally and instinctively for … well, I can’t remember not knowing it), the humans believe the tiger cubs should be able to swim without tuition, so they’re being tested. If they pass, they get to use the outdoor, public-facing compound, which I assume contains a pool comparable to this one. A “pass” being “get back to shore AND get out unattended”.
Think about the consequences if they didn’t do this test, and the keepers discovered that a yearling tiger had fallen into the pool (chased their by one of the others, perhaps ; if they’re not separated by that age), and that it CAN’T swim. Do you (1) let it drown in front of the public? (2) Spend 15 minutes gathering a crew of keepers to go into the wild animal’s cage to try to rescue it.
Who volunteers to get into the water with several hundred kilos of panicking and hyper-stressed carnivore? Ah, I see Mr Gaius Brutus at the head of the crew, complete with chain mail codpiece. You’re going to need more than that, Gaius!
Seriously ; better to find out the answer (sucessfully, it looks to me) when an overgrown butterfly net and a wetsuit is adequate protection. If the cubs do need teaching, then that can be done. But as a swimming test, it looks perfectly natural to me. Nature, not being a loving mother, is neither considerate, brutal, nor caring in either direction.
I suspect that they have done the “gently and slowly into the water” many time back stage. What they’re doing here is sometimes called “Drown-proofing” to be sure they know what to do if they accidently fall in. Part of most human swimming lessons (at an advanced stage) is to be thrown off the high-dive into the deep end wearing full cloths and shoes.
This is just the tigger version of it.
This isn’t just finning behavior from our fishy ancestors?
What I particularly find amusing (Gaius’ question notwithstanding), is that the first (male) cub, when he gets to shore is about to get out when he realises “Standing above me is that horrible human who threw me in … what am I going to do about this … Ah, in those bushes!”
What else would an animal do? There are only a few movements a quadruped can make & surely doggy paddle is the most efficient in water?
Laying flat on your back with just enough of the nose/head to break water and gently using legs is most efficient. It is true still with clothes but you better remove your shoes. Like an otter, but with eyes pointed toward the sky.
Humans are also fastest underwater, streamline, kicking dolphin kick on their backs…except that we do not have gills so we cannot do this for very long.
“While that might be simply a natural reaction to being in an aqueous medium,”
I suspect that’s exactly what it is. If a quadruped fell into a hole, the natural reaction would be to try to scramble up and out of it. Falling into water, I suspect, feels much like falling into a hole and the paddling is simply an attempt to find solid purchase in order to ‘climb’ out of the water.
This could be tested by putting an animal into a harness, lifting it a few inches into the air, and then raising a circular curtain to enclose the animal and block it’s view.
Reminds me of the Royal Feline Swimming Academy from a very early (and disturbing) episode of SNL.
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Sloths can dog paddle quite nicely, if at a very slow pace. They have been seen doing it witout humman intervention.
Surely that should be d*g-paddles?