First glimpse: Rare tiger cub is a surprise arrival at North Yorkshire zoo

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.

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

Zoo manager Ross Snipp told the Yorkshire Post: “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.”

At the moment the sex of the cub remains unknown and it is with its mother in a secure tiger den at the theme park.

The cub has been produced by the same breeding pair which produced triplets at Flamingo Land three years ago.

They went off to other collections and earlier this year one of those cubs also became a father.

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.