His name is White King, he is 10 days old and the zoo says he is a real “teddy bear”. But the lioness who carried him rejected him after a traumatic birth.
Born on May 31, the lion cub is the first white lion born in a Spanish zoo.
Curled up in the arms of Juan Luis Malpartida, director of the zoo in Mundo Park near the southern city of Seville, there is no shortage of hugs and even a bottle of milk.
“It was a bad birth,” he told AFP, adding that the mother, a white lioness brought back from Thailand four years ago “had worked 14 or 15 days before giving birth.”
And when he finally emerged, he was a tough little guy.
“Imagine what she went through, I don’t know how she got it out,” says Malpartida, a 73-year-old man who has spent his life surrounded by animals.
During the first three days, he did not eat and after realizing that his mother “was paying no attention to him”, they took him out of the complex, dehydrated and suffering from “hypothermia and hypoglycemia”.
On Wednesday, the change was obvious.
“It was the first day I saw my head raised, trying to run,” he said.
For the moment, the mother seems quite happy after her ordeal.
“She is completely calm,” he said, indicating that she seemed to have put the birth trauma behind her.
“She wanted to be released from the baby, she was ready to mate again.”
White King will be one of the biggest attractions when this 3,000-animal zoo reopens Thursday after a three-month closure due to the epidemic.
For now, the staff at Mundo Park will continue to look after him.
“When we see that he is ready to find his parents, we will. But it is a delicate question because then he will be in competition with his father” for the mother.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
