Lions await pride in the name of love

DUBLIN Zoo is famous for its lions.

The first Irish cub was born there in 1857 and, according to the magazine Zoo Matters, Dublin had produced 593 lions by 1965, more than any other zoo in the world up to that time.

The male which appears at the start of every Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer film was, reputedly, born in Dublin Zoo. He must be the most widely featured film-star in history.

Until recently, the zoo had two lions but Matt, who entertained visitors with his deep roars, died last summer.

He was 26 years old, a great age for a lion. In the wild, few males live to see their eighth birthday, although 12 and 14-year-old ones are occasionally recorded in national parks. As big cats get older, their kidneys begin to fail, but Sheila, the zoo’s female, is fit and well at the ripe old age of 22.

According to director Leo Oosterweghel, her appetite is keen and her stools are normal. She has a large area all to herself and enjoys lying out at a favourite spot when it’s sunny.

In the popular mind, however, every zoo must have lions, so why is Dublin reduced to only one? Breeding in zoos has become a highly complex affair. In the past animals were allowed to mate willy-nilly but, nowadays, they are treated like medieval princesses, whose partners are chosen with the greatest care.

As wild populations decline all over the world, zoo breeding programmes focus increasingly on vulnerable and endangered species.

The scimitar-horned oryx, for example, became extinct in the wild, but animals which had been bred in zoos, including some from Dublin, were sent to Tunisia for a reintroduction programme. European bison from Fota Wildlife Park joined a herd at the Komaneza Forest in Poland recently, enriching the gene-pool of a species brought back from the brink of extinction.

The matchmakers of the zoo world, known as “stud-book holders”, are the animal equivalent of the Knock Marriage Bureau.

Their task is to maximise genetic diversity and, through selective breeding, ensure that the purest and most healthy strains of each species predominate. Bloodlines are mapped using the latest DNA techniques and prospective breeding partners are matched accordingly. Sheila, alas, isn’t “top drawer”; hers is not a great pedigree.

Of African origin, her roots are obscure and she probably has vagrants of several varieties among her ancestors. Claimants to the lion throne in Dublin are, however, waiting in the wings; three aristocratic young females, at Magdeburg Zoo in Germany, will form the basis of Dublin’s new pride. Their pedigree is no ordinary one, these are Asiatic lions.

In prehistoric times, the King of Beasts roamed Africa, much of Asia and even the Americas; the New World “cave lion”, known only from fossils, was about 25% bigger than any alive today.

There are more than 100 references to lions in the Bible. Daniel, famously, was thrown to these ferocious beasts, when he refused to worship the gods of Babylon, but the cats turned up their noses at him; perhaps they weren’t hungry.

Aristotle refers to lions in the Balkans and they survived in France, Spain and Italy to the beginning of the first millennium. There were still some in the Caucasus in the 10th century. The last Barbary lion was shot in Morocco in 1922.

Nowadays, lions are found only in the wildlife reserves of Africa, apart from a small population in the 1,400km2 Gir Forest Sanctuary in Gujarat, India.

The lions of Europe and of the Bible were close relatives of today’s Gir animals, whose males have less shaggy manes than their African cousins and are said to be more docile. In 1907, there were only 13 animals left in Gir.

Given protection by the local Nawabs, there are now about 360 of them. This is too small a population for comfort, especially when the animals are concentrated in one area, rendering them vulnerable to epidemics and natural disasters.

It is imperative zoos concentrate their breeding programmes on Asiatic, rather then African, lions.

The Magdeburg cubs won’t come to Dublin until Sheila dies. Although hale and hearty, she might harbour germs or viruses harmful to the cubs. The protocol governing the breeding of Asiatic lions forbids introductions where other lions are already present.