Edinburgh Zoo offers £2,000 private tiger feeding experience

Edinburgh Zoo has come up with a new concept which could see wealthy visitors pay an incredible £2,000 to feed a tiger.

The one-of-a-kind attraction will be marketed as a unique and private experience for any tiger lovers out there.

The Build Your Own Wild Experience includes lunch, a coffee and cake voucher, 30-minute sessions with four different animals and their keepers and the rest of the day to explore the Zoo, the Daily Record reports.

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Guests can feed two Sumatran tigers - Dharma, seven, and eight-year-old Lucu - through a wire mesh fence from an area not accessible to the public.

The BBC reports the animals tug at the meat which is predominantly beef, deer, rabbit and horse. Adding adults on the tour cost an additional £1,000 and children £500.

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Lindsay Ross, Edinburgh Zoo's events and experiences manager, said the unique experience was secure and visitors would still be outside the main enclosure. She said: "You don't get to hand feed the tigers obviously. You use tongs, which are similar to a litter pick and it's bits of meat from a bucket.

"You go to where people wouldn't be allowed because we have multiple stand off areas before the last fence but you go with the keeper so its supervised to make sure nobody puts fingers through the fence."

She insisted the whole tour was secure and visitors would still be outside the main enclosure, adding: "It's amazing, they are so majestic up close. It's amazing just the size of their heads and things."

Throughout the tour, visitors also have the choice to feed Asiatic lions Bindee, eight, and Jayendra, 15. The customised tours for two also see visitors being able to go into some cages to stroke or feed the animals.

And despite the high price tag, zoo bosses insists it is answering a demand. The idea comes following the success of £5,000 private tour set up during the final year of the giant pandas' residence in the capital.

The zoo currently offers packages to get up closer with some animals but they are in groups and do not include four different animals or feeding the big cats. Another option on the bespoke tour includes entering the penguin enclosure to feed them as well as stroke and possibly weigh a koala or hold an armadillo.

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Visitors can also feed sloths - but only with tongs because they have sharp claws. Chimpanzees can be fed from a balcony in their enclosure and giraffes can also be hand fed.

Ross added: "So you can throw treats to a specific chimp. The way the balcony is architecturally designed they can't climb up the building, you are higher up than them.

"I don't actually know of any other zoos that do what we do in terms of this. There are not any other zoos that do a build-your-own package."