The favorite animal of the Hodonín Zoo, the South African lion (Panthera leo krugeri) is moving to Bratislava, March 10, 2023, Hodonín.
Hodonín – This morning at the Hodonín Zoo, they said goodbye to the last of the South African lions that the facility kept. A rare creamy white lion headed in a transport crate to the zoo in Bratislava. The caretakers lured him into it with a piece of meat, it was no problem, garden spokesman Ivo Cencinger told ČTK. The eleven-year-old male remained alone from the breeding pair. Instead of the lions of South African zoos, he plans to breed Barbary lions.
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Photo gallery: Hodonín Zoo
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Last August, the male lost a female who was suffering from cardiomyopathy and had other serious complications. Together they gave birth to six cubs, two in 2018 and four in 2020. The lion cubs later traveled to zoos in Lithuania and Venezuela. In the Bratislava Zoo, the male should eventually create another breeding pair.
“We practiced the transition from the quarters to the crate several times so that it would work today. It went without any problems. The nurses lured him to a piece of meat, he was calm,” said the spokesperson. He added that they could have easily lured the lion into the box for two hours, but he got in there in about ten minutes. Then they loaded the crate onto the truck and left the zoo around 9:30. Bratislava is about 80 kilometers from Hodonín, complications are not expected.
Cencinger said that the lion was weighed and measured this morning. The values are 196 kilograms, the lion's withers are 104 centimeters. The visitors could say goodbye to him on Thursday, today it was no longer possible.
South African creamy white lions have been bred by the Hodonín Zoo since 2013. The female has become pregnant several times in the past, but in the first two cases the cubs were stillborn. Only the third breeding was successful, at the end of 2018 the couple gave birth to two females. Two years later, four lion cubs were added, three males and one female.
Both parents and their offspring were proud of their unusual creamy white color. The reason is the so-called leucism, which is a pigmentation disorder that causes a light color of the skin and coat. In South African lions, leucism is rare and quite rare in the wild. Its occurrence is more common in zoos.
The accommodation for the South African lions will now be modified. It will be occupied by a breeding pair of Barbary lions, with the female coming from the Pilsen Zoo and the male from the Neuwied Zoo in Germany. According to the spokesperson, it could be within about a month.
Hodonín Zoo has been breeding lions practically since the beginning of the facility's existence. At first, it bred desert lions, to which Berber lions were added in 2008. Several of them took turns there. A pair of South African lions subsequently took the place of the Berber lions in the new menagerie.
