Just like her name "Hasret" (longing in Turkish) implies, a female jaguar at a Turkish zoo yearns for a mate while her zookeepers set their sights abroad to find a partner for the seven-year-old animal, one of her kind in Turkey.
Hasret arrived from Germany's Duisburg five years ago and has been doomed to solitude since then in Gaziantep zoo in the southeastern Turkey. Officials said they contacted all zoos across the world for a suitable partner to Hasret. Female jaguars enter into a mating period when they reach seven and zookeepers rush to find a male before the ferocious animal gets irritated.
Though the search has been futile so far, the jaguar still has a chance as the zoo was successful in locating a female partner for another animal after 10 years of searching. Şakir the giraffe tied the knot with a fellow giraffe from another Turkish zoo earlier this year.
