New photographs revealed of rare tiger cub

The rare species of tiger cub was born on Friday night, Flamingo Land’s breeding pair, Bawa and Surya, welcomed the cub from the Sumatran species - of which there are only around 300 in the world.

Sarah Mills, director of marketing at Flamingo Land, said: "It's very early days, it was born on Friday the 25th.

"But obviously we can say it is doing very well and it's just the one cub so it's getting all the milk and attention. It's growing day by day and getting stronger.

"It's still got its eyes closed and it will be another 10 days or so before they open but they will be a beautiful blue.

"The father, Bawa, has been going in checking it."

The cub will receive a check-up from a vet at around 8 weeks and they will be able to determine the sex and pick a name.

Just a month ago the team at the leisure resort near Malton believed the mother had miscarried the cub.

Zoo manager Ross Snipp said following the announcement of the birth: “Although it is early days for our Tiger Cub it looks to be very strong and we are very hopeful that this continues. “Around a month ago our Zoo and Vet team believe that she had miscarried so we were all amazed to find the little Cub with its parents on Friday evening.

“We would not normally make this announcement so early but we are so proud of our work in this particular field that we wanted to give as many children as possible the chance to see him or her before the schools go back.”

The Sumatran Tiger is the smallest surviving tiger species and classed as a critically endangered species due to threats of poaching and the loss of natural habitat such as evergreen forests, freshwater swamp forests and peat swamps.