The Dying Lions
Twenty-one lions dying slowly in a Chandigarh zoo, victims of an experiment that went terribly wrong:
In the 1980s officials at the Chhatbir Zoo in Chandigarh, bred captive Asiatic lions with a pair of African circus animals, resulting in a hybrid species.Within a few years it became obvious it had not worked.
The offspring found it hard to walk, let alone run, because their hind legs were weak. And by the mid 1990s the big cats — which live for up to 20 years in captivity — showed symptoms of failing immune systems.
But it wasn’t until 2000 that the breeding programme was ended, and the male lions given vasectomies, by which time the zoo had 70 to 80 such lions. Their number dwindled slowly, with disease killing some and some dying of wounds inflicted by other lions…
(Thanks, Sonia Hill, for emailing me about this report)
This is just so awfully wrong.
Comment by km — September 19, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
This is a very sad story. But the linked article is misleading.
The Asiatic Lion is a *subspecies* of the lion, as are African lions. So their offspring is not a “hybrid species”, although it is a hybrid.
*Any* animal breeding (whether pure or hybrid) must be done carefully and the offspring examined for defects. The terrible mistake here is not that an experiment took place, but that the offspring were allowed to continue to reproduce even after they were seen to be genetically flawed.
Here is a better article on this: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1616628.ece
On a somewhat related note, it’s unfortunate that the Gujarat government, fearing loss of exclusive lion tourism, is refusing to release any Gir lions to be reintroduced into Madhya Pradesh forest (the Kuno project), which has long been delayed because of this. If an epidemic or environmental hazard strikes Gir today, the 300 lions could be wiped out in a flash, and that is the end of the entire subspecies.
Comment by Apu — September 19, 2006 @ 7:23 pm
Absolutely appalling!
The photo says it all…gaunt features…waiting to move on…
Comment by Jay Sun — September 20, 2006 @ 6:25 am
Absolutely appalling!
The photo says it all…gaunt features…waiting to move on…
Comment by Jay Sun — September 20, 2006 @ 2:07 pm
Lions getting a painful death in Chandigarh
Lions getting a painful death in Chandigarh posted at IndianPad.com
Trackback by IndianPad — September 20, 2006 @ 8:57 pm
Reading this felt like spiritual psychosis. As I read, I became was so still that my brathing slowed down, the moment had no sound.
I have never experienced such information, such story, in a way that literally stopped my world.
The things I do not know can fill a universe.
Thank you for this article.
Kim
Comment by Kim — October 9, 2006 @ 3:38 am