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Maybe use semen from a male who isn't maladjusted and violent.
Yeah, breeding with this male doesn't seem like a good idea. There's lots of superfluous male lions around, if they don't euthanize those at birth, at least, so ... that male is utterly replaceable.
Horrifying. That poor lioness. And they're not going to exclude him from the programme when they don't even know what went wrong??
This is like , completely representative of what patriarchy wants to set all women up for. They think they can cage any unhinged loser male with a woman for their breeding quota and then surprise pikachu face when an animal shows it’s nature.
They all keep saying this was out of the blue, so there was not (and next time probably will not be) any indication that the outcome would be a disaster. Based on that, I don't think he should be introduced to any more lionesses. I'm not an animal breeder, but couldn't they use a method similar to the way farmers impregnate their livestock using extracted semen, which they introduce with a swab? (I may not have the details exact, but the gist is that the two animals never actually met each other).
This really makes me mad. Why are they playing games with these lionesses' lives?
You would think they would do artificial insemination
I took a whole paragraph to say this, lol. But yes, I agree. It seems like a no-brainer.
I'm not so sure that artificial insemination is a good idea. It might lead to the male lions getting even more maladjusted. They could put a muzzle on the male or something, for safety.
This sounds like animal abuse too. It’s a good example of why we should be questioning why we think we’re entitled to keep these wild animals in captivity anyways.
There was a female tiger killed in a similar incident in 2022, that was in a UK zoo. Staff seem to think they can put the animals near each other for a few days then put them together.
I would think a couple of summers, at least. And then if only they observe mating behavior in both of them? Not sure what it is for lions.
Animals are not people but they do have their preferences for things much like us and sometimes they just don't want to mate with a member of their own species just because they are from the opposite sex and they may even not get along well much like these two and hate each other...
I have many questions as one who has knowledge of these sorts of things:
My biggest question is that it was not specified in the article how long exactly they were allowed to see each other through bars. If they were doing a socialization protocol for only a few days that is nowhere near enough time to say that these animals are compatible.
Second: if the female is not in estrus, then she will be in danger of getting hurt, full stop. If the female had decided she did not like the male and she tried to get away from him or tell him off and he escalated, then it’s at the fault of the zookeepers for not paying enough attention to biological markers such as when the female is in heat (or otherwise receptive to a male’s advances).
A few days or even a few weeks of lions socializing through bars is not enough time to observe if the male will ever get aggressive with her.
This zoo needs a better standard operating procedure for big cat socialization from now on and he should be removed from the breeding list. Or they should decide to do artificial insemination which is much safer for both animals if they are hellbent on using his genes still. I read that he had a previous mate and cubs before this, so other confounding factors are at play here from this incident and should be looked into further.