Rabat Zoo Welcomes First Tigers, Expanding Animal Collection for Visitors

"With the aim of enriching its offer and diversifying the animal collection presented, the Rabat Zoological Garden is welcoming, for the first time, a species so sought after and appreciated by the public, the tiger," said the Rabat Zoological Park in a press release.

The two tigers "Nayo and Matchy, come from a national zoological institution and will be installed at the Savane biozone level," the statement said, adding that the two felines, aged 4 and 3 respectively, were born in Morocco from parents originally from France.

"The two tigers can be differentiated by the color of their coat. Nayo, the male, is a reddish color striped with black and weighs over 250 kg, while Matchy, the female, is a white tigress weighing about 200 kg," the same source further details.

The tiger is the largest wild feline and one of the largest terrestrial carnivores. It is classified as "Endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and lives in Asia, where its range extends from India to Siberia, through China, Thailand and others. Only about 4,000 tigers are currently counted in the wild worldwide, the press release recalls.