Beloved by generations of Russian children, Goodnight Little Ones is the longest-running children’s show in the world and has featured virtually the same evening format since it started in 1964.
A new addition to the show will be Mur to join Khryusha, a piglet (introduced in 1970), Stepashka, a hare (introduced the same year), Philya, a dog, introduced in 1968, Karkusha, a crow, introduced in 1982, and Mishutka, a bear, introduced in 2002.
Mur is a tiger cub.
‘The ideas were discussed with children and their parents, and the opinion of psychologists was asked. It is important that the little TV viewers should take a fancy to the new personage because it is coming to the TV show for good.’
He explained: ‘The idea to take an Amur tiger cub ‘on the staff’ came into our mind after an interview with President Putin, who told of his active support of several ecological programmes to protect rare animal species on the verge of extinction.
He said that these animals are our national treasure and that they need protection.
He admitted that the tiger cub proposal initially ‘sounded a bit surprising’ but ‘we looked carefully at this idea, we realized it was a bingo!’
A new Soyuz crew will take the plushy toy tiger cub to the International Space Station, ISS, as part of an action to call public attention to rare species.
The action has been organized by the Russian Space Agency Roskosmos and two non-profit organizations – the Amur Tiger and the Far Eastern Leopards centers.
A new ISS crew whose composition was approved by a state commission earlier on Wednesday is to take off from Baikonur on September 26. For the first time in ten years, the crew will comprise a woman – Elena Serova. The ISS expedition will last for 168 days.
“On the eve of the International Tiger Day, Roskosmos has decided to support an environmental action designed to call public attention to rare species. The Amur tiger cub named Mur and a far eastern leopard will fly to the International Space Station,” Yuri Lonchakov, the head of the space training center, said.
In addition to that, the crew, comprising Alexander Samokutayev, Elena Serova and Barry Wilmore, will take a flask with water taken from the River Kazanka in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, in honor of the 16th FINA World Championship in aquatics to be hosted by Kazan in 2015.
The crew of Maxim Surayev which the new ISS expedition in going to replace will return the flask with water back to Earth. The ‘space’ water will later be handed over to a museum.
