On a grassy plain in South Africa,thousands of miles from home,two pairs of Zoo--bred South China tiger cubs----one-year-o1d Hope and Cathay and six-month-old Tiger Woods and Madonna--are learning to hunt in the wild.The hope is that they will one day pass on their skills to their young,allowing the next generation to get back to wildlife reserves in China. A survey shows that the tigers are in more danger of dying out than China's most famous animal,the giant panda.Forty years ago,about 4,000 South China tigers lived in the wild.Today there are only about 30.An additional 64 live in 19 zoos in China,,which are all descendants of six wild animals seized in 1956. The cubs were born in zoos in China and removed from their mothers when they were three months old.Their first home in South Africa was a one-acre camp where they stayed for a month.Their next home was a ten acre area,where they lived for three months to help them gradually get used to life outside a cage. When the cubs first arrived in South Africa,they didn't even want to leave their cages.It took weeks to get them to eat chicken,used as they were to being fed beef at the Zoo in China where they were born.It took months of practice to hunt a live animal and then make the link between the kill and food.Now just a few months on,and living in a 150-acre camp,they have become remarkably skilled hunters. All four animals will finally return to Zoos in China while the pioneering pairs' cubs will grow up completely wild.The aim is for _ to go to reserves developed in China by 2008,when the Olympic Games will be held in Beijing. The tigers are sent to South Africa so that_.
their young can live in the wild their young can have a better environment they can get used to wildlife reserves they can live a free life in the wild