Longleat Safari & Adventure Park Barbary lion

There is an news article in the April 2009 edition of BBC Wildlife entitled ' Saving the Barbary Lion ' .

It now seems that Barbary lions were more closely related to the Asiatic lion than the lions of sub-Saharan Africa . At one time these lions would have been distributed right across the Middle East , from North Africa to India .

New DNA sampling is being organised by Wildlink International which says that the results could lead to the issuing of breeding recommendations and important strides forward in lion conservation efforts .
 
Cat-Man said:
i think chester have one sub-species of asiatic elephant, and blackpool and whipsnade (and formely london) have another. (presumably they are either Indian or Sri Lankan)

and as far as i am aware, there are no african forest elephants in captivity
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Please don`t just THINK check things out first and then post something which is actually true and correct,and not just wrong and incorrect.Yes some of the Elephants in the U.K are pure but alot are of mixed sub-species ISIS is a pretty good guide as to what is what.
 
Barbaries- the story continues.

Bele said:
New DNA sampling is being organised by Wildlink International which says that the results could lead to the issuing of breeding recommendations and important strides forward in lion conservation efforts .
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I've read the BBC Wildlife item and it is rather vague. It doesn't say what lions are being tested or who by. Is it the same Oxford Universityteam who did the previous tests? The accompanying photo also shows a male Lion with no belly hair whatsoever, yet captioned as a 'definite' Barbary... that can't be correct.

It also mentions 'a number of Barbaries are in the UK at Port Lympne, Belfast and Longleat'. The DNA results so far indicate the Lions which were tested from both Rabat Zoo & Port Lympne lack the same Haplotype clearly identified in museum specimens of known North African location, so they are not Barbary.

There are Lions in other zoos unrelated to the Rabat/Port Lympne stock, that remain untested- e.g. Madrid who claim their Lions are directly descended from ones originaly imported from Morocco, so maybe that is a good starting point? There are others in Eastern Europe too.
 
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Wildlink international were in charge of the funding for this project but they disappeared for several years and the Funding dried up. Maybe they have found more money to revive the testing procedure.
 
zoogiraffe said:
Please don`t just THINK check things out first and then post something which is actually true and correct,and not just wrong and incorrect.Yes some of the Elephants in the U.K are pure but alot are of mixed sub-species ISIS is a pretty good guide as to what is what.
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Acually ISIS is a pretty poor guide. Records keepers are often not animal people and can only interpret the data given to them as a best fit within the database. Many collections believe they have a certain 'pure' subspecies and enter their animals as such, the barbary lions being a classic case. If the animals do not prove to be the case it doesn't necessarily get changed. There are examples of animals currently entered into ISIS that I know for a fact are not pure subspecies. Also ISIS members do not necessarily keep their records updated regularly, nor are dead collections removed (so animals can be counted twice or more). If you are a member of ISIS then you are able to access more information, informing one of recently updated records. There are however loads of problems with the database. Given that it services so many countries around the world I cannot be too hard on ISIS and hopefully the situation will improve with ZIMS (but that has been on the cards for the last five or more years).

Elephants being long-lived and rarely bred in captivity (thus most are wild born and of pure subspecies) are an interesting situation. There seems to be little concensus about how many Asiatic elephant subspecies exist and historically there have been many movements of animals within the entire range eg. Pygmy elephants on Borneo appear to be feral animals from an extinct group on Java. I haven't seen any specifics on the difference between the various subspecies and I can imagine that it is in the species best interest that they are considered one population (at least in captivity).

While it is true that the white lions at WMSP and Paradise are probably the only 'pure' African lions in the country, the reality is that they are inbred. Who knows whether we are talking siblings or parent-offspring, but I don't believe they have much future for maintaining a wide genetic base for any captive population.

Heck horses are a man-made idea of what Tarpans looked like. I have worked with another breed, Konicks, which to all intensive purposes look like Tarpans (or what we intrepret as). However having talked to horse geneticists both breeds show small features not consistent with Tarpans, based presumably on cave paintings.
 
tetrapod said:
While it is true that the white lions at WMSP and Paradise are probably the only 'pure' African lions in the country, the reality is that they are inbred. Who knows whether we are talking siblings or parent-offspring, but I don't believe they have much future for maintaining a wide genetic base for any captive population.
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Aren't white lions of the panthera leo krugeri subspecies(south African lion)?
Because aren't there several African lion subspecies?
 
BearCat said:
Aren't white lions of the panthera leo krugeri subspecies(south African lion)?
Because aren't there several African lion subspecies?
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They are part of the krugeri subspecies, but carry a mutant gene. The zoos maintaining and breeding them care more for hair follicle colour and gate monies than preserving a particular subspecies of African lions.

That said, Leipzig Zoo is currently investigating all lions in EAZA accredited zoos to determine their numbers and devise a future policy concerning pure-bred African lion breeding (I am sure the krugeri whites will NOT be included).
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
. The zoos maintaining and breeding them care more for hair follicle colour and gate monies than preserving a particular subspecies of African lions.
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I would like to secont this!

Not only for Lions but for all mutant recessive genes (white lions, white tigers and so on ) that some Zoo like to bred for and to show!

While I've no problem with Zoo's showing these "rare" colours for education purposes, I see no point - and find it even offensive - in Zoo breeding for these colour or for extreme caracteristics ..
Doing that Zoos are not only going the wrong way where concerning conservation but are also becoming a "freak show" ...

Just my 2 cents
 
CindelP said:
I would like to secont this!

I see no point - and find it even offensive - in Zoo breeding for these colour or for extreme caracteristics ..
Doing that Zoos are not only going the wrong way where concerning conservation but are also becoming a "freak show" ...

I agree with you to a point. Their main goal of most zoos, is to breed and preserve rare & endangered creatures in order for a healthy and strong genetic stock of animals which can one day be released into the wild... however in order to raise the rediculously huge amounts of money needed to do this, zoos and other institutions need to attract as many people as possible, as the public are the biggest part of conservation if you think about it. Im not saying breeding white tigers and lions is the way to go but those ''freaks'' have made a hell of a lot of money for their species simply by looking the way they do, & like all tigers & lions of any colour, maybe they deserve a bit of respect...
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I don't find anything wrong with breeding white lions or tigers, so long as they're breeding UNRELATED pairs. After all, the mutations are natural, but the zoos are just fixing them by inbreeding, which is where the problem lies.

The lions, for example, would be better off bred to normal lions so that the gene gets passed on-not as crowd drawing, perhaps, but when a white lion DOES crop up amongst a litter of normals, I think it would make the white animal just that bit more special :)
 
Intentioned breed of albino/white animals it´s (at least for me) like to breed a chicken with 4 legs or any similar animal with a genetic anomaly
 
A report and picture on their web-site shows 2 white lion cubs born at Paradise Park and being mother-reared .
 
Cat-Man said:
well it is:o:)
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Well no its not, if we hated them and didn't want to see them at all then you would be right. I don't think anyone here wouldn't like to see them if they were breed with a better moral background (and were something of consevation importance i.e. pure breeds).
 
taun said:
I don't think anyone here wouldn't like to see them if they were breed with a better moral background (and were something of consevation importance i.e. pure breeds).
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Very true that they way most white tigers were bred was disgusting, forcing an animal to breed with a close relative just to look good is appaling. But here we are over 50 years later with many captive white tigers that have been bred so extensively that there is now an expanded gene pool. Although pretty much all tigers share Mohan as an anscestor, its not as if all white tigers are now brothers & sisters anymore, so like what was said earlier, we now have a chance to breed white tigers and lions responsibly without severe inbreeding occuring...
 
I'd like to add that, purity of a species is starting to become quite overated. Conservationists seem to be caring more about an animal's genetic purity than it's actual health & well being. Asiatic lions being a prime example, both edinburgh & chester zoos have had a lot of problems breeding their animals, most of you are probably aware of this already. Whereas the old longleat lion Kabir, who wasn't of ''pure'' ancestry managed to sire about a dozen? healthy cubs in the space of 4 years with just 2 females! I would personally much rather see healthy hybrid lions and tigers living and breeding in the wild succesfully, than see genetically ''pure'' lions & tigers who have to mate with their own parents in order to survive becuase there are so few of them.
 
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