The head in the alligator's mouth thing has been done to death. Lion-taming? Being stepped on by an elephant? So circa-1950s Ringling Brothers. But take a couple of Bengal tigers and a pair of human breasts and we've got ourselves a story.

After an adult Bengal tiger at the Yangon Zoological Gardens in Yangon, Myanmar, killed one of her cubs, the zoo decided it best to separate her from the remaining two. The two-week-old cubs, though, were in need of something only a mama could give them - breast milk. Hla Htay, the lactating relative of a zoo staffer, stepped up to the plate, offering to breastfeed the two Bengals - at least until their teeth grew in.

"I felt sorry for them," Htay told the Myanmar Times.

Along with four half-hour feeding sessions a day, the cubs are being bottle-fed and zoo veterinarians are confident they'll survive the unusual tiger rearing.

» Scott Saxon