Birth of a Lion

Comments () | Published November 5, 2010

The outpouring over Naba’s cub was a reminder that people don’t go to zoos to see nature, that what they want is to get a glimpse of the wild without any of its grim realities.

Another reminder of that fact came on a busy Sunday afternoon last November when a deer jumped into the lion yard. Naba and Shera were outside. When they attacked, the crowd that had been admiring them gasped in horror and cheered for the deer, which put up a surprisingly good fight and escaped into the deep end of a moat in the lion yard.

After the keepers got both lions indoors, the deer climbed out of the water and collapsed. A necropsy revealed that the lions’ claws had sliced through its organs without leaving a mark where they went in. Videos of the attack quickly appeared on YouTube.

In the past, the National Zoo waited weeks before announcing animal births because so many newborn animals die. But it’s trying to be more open. In the process, it has had to find a new balance to allow the public to see its inner workings and follow their favorite animals without traumatizing people when something goes wrong.

The same week Naba’s cub died, Shera bred with Luke. Two weeks later, Naba went back into heat and bred with him again.

When Putman confirmed that both lions’ progesterone levels had stayed high for more than 50 days, Saffoe and his team began preparing for two new litters. This time, they’d use a kind of hay with fewer awns and sift through it by hand to remove as many as possible. And they’d wait three days before launching the cub cam, in the meantime offering snippets of video and updates on Facebook, Twitter, and the zoo’s own Web site.

As Stites watched Shera’s third cub on her laptop, she saw a twitch. Then another. And another. Soon the cub was squirming around as if it had suddenly sprung to life.

The next morning, her husband woke before her and refreshed the screen on her computer. Though she’d been up late, he knew she’d want him to wake her with the news. “Congratulations,” he said. “You have a fourth cub.”

A month later, Naba had her own restless night. By then, the cubs were practically visible inside her belly. “Sometimes on the camera you could see these lumps,” Clark says.

Naba didn’t start to toss and turn till around 1:30 am. Zoo staff members set alarms to wake up periodically, but Naba didn’t have her first cub till 8 the next morning. By then, some staffers were gathered in the keepers’ office, cheering on each of the three newborns. Though the cubs were blind—their eyes don’t fully open until they’re around ten days old—and unsteady on their feet, they made their way over to their mother and started nursing within a few minutes of birth.