“The best lion left for me, right after his father Benit,” commented nurse Dana Reisig commented on Simon’s loss. Lev Simon was old and suffered from chronic musculoskeletal and other old age problems. However, according to the nurses, he did not suffer.
“We are waiting for the results of the cause of death. It was probably an acute infection that he could no longer deal with. Simon will return to us, he belongs here inseparably. We are negotiating with the preparer, “said Jitka Vokurková, a zoologist from the Olomouc Zoo.
The most bred pups
According to the zoologist, a female Lilly is now longing for Simon, with whom she successfully bred a total of six kittens, the last of which Thembi (Hope) was born on May 11, 2018. Simon was a male with the largest number of bred cubs in the world, his two offspring from 2013 were even the only born lions this year the world has seen.
–
Svatokopecká Zoo contributed a total of twenty cubs to the population of the extinct Berber lion. According to the zoo, the last wild Berber lion was in Morocco until 1942.
There are few breeding Berber lions and too many kinship ties between them, so it is very difficult to build a breeding pair. In Europe, they currently breed in about twenty breeding institutions, numbering about eighty individuals. The Olomouc Zoo thus had a large share in this number. In addition to the zoo on Svatý Kopeček, Berber lions are also bred in Dvůr Králové, Liberec and Pilsen. Most of them are “Olomouc people”. The zoo has been breeding these animals since 1979.
–
