Chester Zoo Chakra the Lion cub

That is sad to hear, a difficult decision for all involved, but with that most difficult decision made it must have been the right one.
 
Does anyone know what the problem was? When I last saw him he seemed to have a big problem with his back legs?
 
Very sad news.
I wonder if the problem is genetic. I guess that all Indian lions must be inbred to a degree. Asha's litters by Asoka have both been small (2 cubs and 1, unless she gave birth to more last time and then ate them, which she might have done if they were still-born or died shortly after birth). One cub from the first litter was a runt and did not live long, Tejas had a problem with his front legs (which was not thought to be genetic) and now this has happened. It could just be bad luck, but it could be a sign of something worse.

Alan
 
It is a worry this development problem, especially as it happened with Tejas beforehand. But baby Chakra was her 3rd litter, so it begs the question of what will they do next with the pair, would it be: allow them to try for one more litter, swop females over, or even bring another female in (as Asha and Asoka have such a strong bond, splitting them might not be a good thing) or prevent the pair from breeding completely.

I hope it isn't the latter choice though as Chester as far as i know didn't lose a single cub with their original pair, Chandani and Jake, and it would be a shame to stop the breeding of lions at chester
 
The Jaguars were stopped breeding due to 3 unsuccesfully litters. I expect they will have some directions from the stubbook keeper in due course.
 
gentle lemur said:
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I wonder if the problem is genetic. I guess that all Indian lions must be inbred to a degree.

Alan
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There could be something in this.. The founders of the current Zoo stock were 2.2. at London (of which 1.1 were sent to Chester) plus a similar total shared between Helsinki and (I believe) Zurich. They all came from the same location- the Junadaghar Zoo in India, and its anybody's guess how closely they were related to each other.e.g. parents/offspring/siblings etc.

Despite careful management and selection of breeding pairs to avoid inbreeding, all the Asiatic Lions in our zoos are, as far as I know, descended from those few original founders, with no fresh imports from India to date.
 
The EEP is working towards importing more Asian lions from Sakkarbaug Zoo, Junagadh. However, this may be a drawn out political process and could take quite a while to accomplish (this was before some 80-95 Indian zoos assigned ISIS membership by the Indian CZA authority).

Singapore Night Zoo is hoping to receive a direct import of Asian lions from India and it has been tentatively suggested that any offspring would be available to the EEP.

Regarding Sakkarbaug Zoo, their 2007/08 studbook has quite a few wild born rescuees. Perhaps there is some hope that sooner rather than later unrelated individuals may be exported outside.

Indian zoos are as yet swamped with hybrid AsianxAfrican lions and African lions and available spaces for breeding of Asian lions are few (and the hybrids may take quite some time yet to die out naturally).

In all this, one has to remember that the genetic variability in the wild Asian lions may not be exactly high. I have yet to get to a paper on the genetics of wild Gir lions (indicative of how wild population management of Asian lions can be improved upon further).
 
Paulkarli08 said:
It is a worry this development problem, especially as it happened with Tejas beforehand. But baby Chakra was her 3rd litter, so it begs the question of what will they do next with the pair, would it be: allow them to try for one more litter, swop females over, or even bring another female in (as Asha and Asoka have such a strong bond, splitting them might not be a good thing) or prevent the pair from breeding completely.

I hope it isn't the latter choice though as Chester as far as i know didn't lose a single cub with their original pair, Chandani and Jake, and it would be a shame to stop the breeding of lions at chester
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Chester do hope to bring in a second female.
 
Asiatic Lion Genetics

It occurs to me that given the small pool of Asiatic Lion genes, why haven't there been other cases from around the world of this type of developmental disorder or have there been? Has anyone heard of other such cases or is the one at Chester an isolated case. If it isn't, then surely this must send alarm bells ringing for the future of Asiatic Lion Conservation breeding programmes. Perhaps now would be a good time to critically take stock as to what, if anything, we can do to maximise what genetic variability we have amongst captive individuals of this species.:cool:
 
Peafowl said:
It occurs to me that given the small pool of Asiatic Lion genes, why haven't there been other cases from around the world of this type of developmental disorder or have there been? Has anyone heard of other such cases or is the one at Chester an isolated case. If it isn't, then surely this must send alarm bells ringing for the future of Asiatic Lion Conservation breeding programmes. Perhaps now would be a good time to critically take stock as to what, if anything, we can do to maximise what genetic variability we have amongst captive individuals of this species.:cool:
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When I was at Chessington we lost a litter of 3 cubs to a cerebral hernias where the skull had not grown properly, they were all fine until about 15 months old then started displaying problems as the brain out grew the skull, one had a seizure in the enclosure, in front of the vet and it was euthanized that day and post mortem revealed the problem, the other two cubs displayed similar symptoms shortly afterwards and it was decided they should be euthanised.

Their mum was Devika from Paignton and dad was Ashok from Chester, Sadly devika died after a short illness before conceiving again so we'll never know whether it was just one of those things, there have been several other cases of similar cases in Europe all of which have been documented in the Studbook, research I believe is on going.
 
the same or similar problems are affecting sumatran tiger cubs too because the founder population was so small.
lets hope for a fresh infusion of genes either directly from India or via Singapore. The studbook keepers for the Sumatran Tigers around the world have a lot to thank Terri Irwin for lol
 
I was gutted to read the news about Chakra on the zoo website yesterday morning :( He seemed very healthy and happy, and he, Asha and Asoka looked like they were making a lovely family unit. Last time I was at the zoo he was out with Asha, and I did wonder if he was limping a little. Given what happened with Tejas, I wonder if that was what sealed his fate.

Regardless, very sad news, and I feel very sorry for the keepers and vets. It's never an easy decision to make to put an animal to sleep, especially one so young. I hope Asha didn't take his loss too hard.
 
glyn said:
the same or similar problems are affecting sumatran tiger cubs too because the founder population was so small.
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With the Asian Lions I think the whole UK/European population are descended from the 8 founders which came from Sakkarbaug Zoo. And of course some of those may have been closely related to each other in the first place, there is no way of knowing.
 
similiar problems with the south china tiger basically all of the captive population are descended from 8 individuals I think it is I'm not sure
 
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