‘Dora’, the first lion cub born to the lioness ‘Lara’ at the Ridiyagama Safari Park, is now displayed to the public. It was first open to the public on January 18, 2022. According to Hemantha Samarasekara, Assistant Director of the Department of National Zoological Gardens, with Dora, the lion population in the Safari Park has increased up to 15.
Dora’s story
Dora is five-and-a-half months old. She is a female lion cub, and fourth to have been born at Ridiyagama. The cub was looked after by Safari Park employees ever since the lioness (cub’s mother) abandoned it soon after she was born.
“The Safari Park employees are tasked with caring for her and raising her under 24-hour surveillance. She is consuming milk and meat and is growing well,” National Zoological Gardens Department Director General Shermila Rajapaksha said to the media when Dora was first displayed for public viewing on January 18.
However, as Dora is still young, Safari Park management does not allow people to see her all the time. Only twice a day, the public can see her.
Sheena’s and Sahara’s cubs
Though the media gave wide publicity for Dora’s public debut, another three cubs were born at the Ridiyagama Safari Park on November 17, 2020. They were delivered by a nine-year-old lioness ‘Sheena’. Before that, in 2017, she gave birth to four cubs as well. Sheena was, in fact, imported from Germany to the Dehiwala Zoo.
At the time she was two years old and moved to the Ridiyagama Safari Park when she was four. In 2016 and 2018, two more lion cubs were born at the park. The mother of them was ‘Sahara’, another lioness. But out of two, only one cub born in 2018 survived.
Captive breeding
Although it seems that lion cubs can be easily raised, developing a lion cub up to maturity is not an easy task. Robert Falconer, a veteran lion breeder, describes this task as follows:
“Wild animals need physical literacy in order to survive. A baby lion learns these skills from its mother. But what happens when a lion cub is removed from its mother after birth? How does it learn the skills it needs to survive in the wild?
“It’s a process I was fortunate to participate in while working in a captive breeding and release program for lions outside Livingstone, Zambia in 2011.
“Operated by the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust (ALERT), the program’s objective is to use captive bred lions to reintroduce a sustainable lion population into the wild.
“In a captive breeding and release program, lion cubs are removed from their mothers immediately after birth to ensure survivability, health optimization, and gene diversification for the species. In this situation, without a lioness to teach her cubs, it’s up to project staff and volunteers to step in and raise the young animals.”
‘I was a mom to lion cubs in Africa’
Falconer elaborates the challenges of captive breeding of lions in an article written to the Active for Life website, which was published on May 6, 2013. The title of his article was ‘I was a mom to lion cubs in Africa’.
There, he further explains: “Just as human babies don’t automatically know how to walk or grip an object, lions aren’t born with the ability to stalk or grasp prey. Of course, the instinct is there, but it needs patient instruction and supervision from an adult for that instinct to be unlocked.”
According to him, lions are highly physical creatures, and that physical activity is vital for their survival. In particular, males must learn how to defend themselves and their pride from other territorial males, along with opportunistic scavengers such as hyenas. Females (who are almost exclusively responsible for hunting) meanwhile, must learn to work together cooperatively to stalk and bring down prey. But in captivity, the cubs’ physical strength is not developed up to wild lion’s strength. With that, they cannot survive in the wild. This is why they should be given much training about hunting and surviving.
As he says, from 12 to 14 months lions develop their coordination and are just beginning to learn the more complex physical skills necessary to hunt. They’re also starting to learn more about their environment, and their place in it. So at this time they should be carefully looked after.
Physical literacy
“Walking is a core physical literacy skill for a lion. It forms the basis for other mobility actions such as stalking, running, pouncing and climbing; enables social interaction and bonding; and allows for environmental exploration and observation,” writes Falconer.
He further describes the task of training lions in captivity:
“Our job was to set a direction, coordinate the animals’ pathway, and ensure their safety (not to mention our own) by keeping watch for venomous snakes, crocodiles, elephants, and hippos.”
Being able to climb is also important for lions for a variety of reasons, from negotiating difficult or rocky terrain, to being able to climb up and down a tree to survey their surroundings, or even - on extremely rare occasions - protect themselves from marauding hyenas if for some reason they find themselves alone.
Robert Falconer believes lions need unstructured play too. Play teaches them how to grasp their prey, how to move with one another (important when bringing down a large animal as a group), and develops overall confidence. Unlike most cats, lions are highly social; physically touching each other aids in bonding and overall health maintenance - much in the same way as it does with humans.
“In addition to providing a safe haven for play, we also built toys out of indigenous materials in an effort to further develop both the lions’ physical literacy skills and to help satisfy their natural sense of curiosity. Using branches, leaves and - believe it or not - elephant dung, we fashioned makeshift balls suspended in the air, and even constructed very crude (and I do mean crude) baboons, impalas and other animals for the lions to swat and play with.”
That’s how Falconer describes the techniques of lion training. Now, we can have a clear picture about the training of lion cubs to survive in the wild. As such, it is not at all an easy job. Essentially, it needs scientific knowledge as well as practical knowledge on lions. Experience taken from living among lions is paramount to raise them to surviving in the wild. Yet, as for us, we do not have such knowledge or experience among wild lions. Therefore, we can never develop lion cubs to survive in the wild. But as we have no such intention for the lion cubs in the Safari Park, raising them to familiarize the wild is out of the question. We only focus on developing lion cubs to survive rather than dying them in vain. But mind you, this is not wildlife conservation, but exploiting wild animals for recreational purposes.