Zoo auctions tiger poo

5:38am Saturday 9th September 2006

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It smells awful and may even frighten your pet moggy, but Chessington World of Adventures is already attracting interest by auctioning off a year's supply of tiger poo.

Excrement from the zoo's two tigers is on sale on the ebay internet auction site with a starting bid of £240. In what some may take as proof you can sell anything on the internet, the auction had attracted a bid of £241 by Friday evening.

The park believes it will scare off cats and foxes if placed in people's gardens.

Research carried out earlier this year found tiger dung is capable of warding off smaller cats, which scientists presume is a genetic trigger warning of larger predators in the area.

The initial research came from Australia, where scientists found that a formula of the big cat's droppings warded off wild goats for three days and, as such, could be used as a dual fertiliser and repellent by farmers.

Dr Peter Murray from the University of Queensland said: "You might want to put it around the perimeter or under each tree so it would cause all those herbivorous animals to say "it's too scary, there's something here that might bite me"."

Shamans and witch doctors have also been known to prescribe tiger dung to cure various ailments, although bidders would be well advised to consult their doctors before self-medicating.

Chessington's mess will come from its two Sumatran tigers Ratna and Batu, who arrived in 2004 as part of the Endangered Species Breeding Programme.

A tiger produces roughly one pound of manure every day, meaning over the course of a year the successful bidder could get over 700lb of the stuff.

Anyone interested in making a poo purchase will have to pick up the dung themselves and there is a strict no returns policy.

Go to ebay.co.uk and search for tiger poo to find the item. Bidding ends at 5.30pm BST on Saturday, September 9. All proceeds will go to the NSPCC.