These five little white cubs are among the rarest lions in the world.
Born in the Ukraine two weeks ago, three of them in a safari park and two in a zoo in the coastal city of Yalta, they all share a recessive gene that gives them their ᴜпіqᴜe pure white color.
They have been rounded up to be bred by the keepers of the Yalta Zoo. The cubs don’t have names yet, but they will be given one in a few months when they grow up.
Cute: White lion cubs rest on a towel in the office of the director of the Yalta Zoo in Ukraine. The ultra-large cats were born a fortnight ago to fawn-colored parents.
Chilling oᴜt: A white lion cub snuggles up to a teddy bear
Baby: A zookeeper holds a white lion cub at feeding time
White lions are not albino. Like blue eyes in humans, the white color of animals is due to a recessive gene shared by both parents.
Staff at the Yalta Zoo, where the first two females were born, said they were not expecting the white cubs, which came from a fawn mother of normal color.
Alexander Dyakov, a veterinarian at Yalta Zoo, told the International Business Times: “We expected the cubs to be fawn or straw colored, the natural color of lions, but we were very, very pleasantly excited.”
‘That is, it is a great rarity for Ukraine, for Europe, for the whole world, white lions are a real rarity.
And we have two absolutely healthy, absolutely stupid female lion cubs. We wait for them to grow and show off.’
The animals are being raised in the zoo director’s office at the moment. The tawny mother lion didn’t produce enough milk to feed them, so zookeepers give them a bottle every two hours.
һᴜпɡгу: The tawny lioness mother did not produce enough milk to feed her cubs, so zookeepers give them a bottle every two hours.
Someone Needs A Bib: A White Lion Cub Drools Some Of Its Formula During Feeding Time
ѕᴜгргіѕed: Yalta Zoo director Oleg Zubkov holds a white lion cub. The staff were not expecting the ultra colored white big cats.
adopted: Mr. Zubkov and his wife Olga take care of the animals in their office at the zoo
White lions are native only to the Greater Timbavati region of South Africa, an area characterized by white sandy riverbeds and long sunburnt grass.
They are considered sacred animals by the people of that region, but after they were ‘discovered’ by Europeans in the 1970s, many were taken from the wіɩd to captive breeding and һᴜпtіпɡ operations, according to the Global White Lion Protection Trust. .
These deletions, along with the culling of lions and the torture of male lions, destroyed the gene pool and the animals have been technically extinct in life for the past 12 years.
In their natural habitat, white lions are considered ‘survivors’, capable of successfully hunting day and night and taking down animals as large as giraffes.
Majestic: A captive-bred male white lion reintroduced to the female yawns while basking in the warm African sun.
Despite their rarity, white lions are not yet classified as eudates because biologists still consider them ultimately equal to their tawny counterparts.
The Global White Lion Protection Trust is campaigning for white lions to be recognized as a species of lion, so they can be protected under international law.
However, the genetic marker that makes white lions alike has yet to be identified by scientists and research on the animals is ongoing.
The trust estimates that no more than 300 white lions exist. In recent years, he has reintroduced the animals to a nature reserve within Greater Timbavati in an effort to eventually turn the gene into winged lions.
