Experts believe 11 lions found in a forgotten Ethiopian zoo may be related to two African subspecies wiped out by colonists.
Eddie Koch reports
Ever wondered why the beast roaring out of the screen at the start of every MG M movie doesn’t really look like the cats you see in the Kruger National Park? It is because the ferocious lion with a long black mane which features so of
ten in popular iconography is now extinct in Africa.
Or is it? Eleven animals which look remarkably like the magnificent Cape or Ba rbary lions — subspecies resembling the near-mythical “biblical lion” that is thought to have died out in Africa decades ago — have been “discovered” by a South African researcher at a forgotten zoo in Ethiopia.
Hym Ebedes, specialist wildlife researcher at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Ins titute, spotted a group of lions with distinctive long, wide black manes that reach under their bellies at a zoo in Addis Ababa during a research expedition into Ethiopia’s wilderness areas late last year.
The scientist says the male cats in the pride, descendants of a group of lions kept by Emperor Haile Selassie at the royal palace in Addis before he was top
pled in a 1974 coup, have the physical features of the North African Barbary l ion or South Africa’s Cape lion. Both were shot out of existence by white hunt ers and settlers during the colonial period.
“Over the past 35 years I have seen hundreds of wild lions in game reserves, l ots of captive lions in zoos all over the world, as well as photographs of lio ns in wildlife books from all over southern, western and eastern Africa, but I had never before seen anything so impressive, majestic and magnificient,” Ebe
des told the Mail & Guardian.
“The sight of a black-maned lion pacing around his cage just before feeding ti me in a zoo in Addis Ababa last October had an indescribable spine-chilling ef fect on me. This animal was exactly as I had always visualised and pictured th e Cape lion, which became extinct about 150 years ago.”
Barbary lions from the Atlas Mountain region in present-day Morocco were impo rted from North Africa into the Roman Empire. They were used in gladiator cont ests and featured in legendary accounts of Christians being persecuted by the Romans.
The last of the North African animals was shot dead in the Atlas region during the 1920s. Their ferocious features and beautiful black manes appear frequent
ly in Greek mythology, biblical literature (the lions of Judea and the animal that Samson killed with the jaw of an ass), popular Western iconography (MGM m ovies and Simba cartoons), as well as the folklore of many African cultures.
The Cape lions, which had a strong resemblance to their North African cousins, were hunted by colonial farmers in the 19th century and were thought to have
become extinct in the 1850s. Cape (Leo melanochaitus) and Barbary (Leo leo le
o) lions — each a subspecies of the same cat family (Panthera leo) — pro bably developed similar features because cool winter climates and the absence of dense b ush on each tip of the continent allowed their manes to grow longer than other types of African lions.
A 19th century account describes males of the extinct Cape lion as having “lar ge manes that reach far behind the shoulders; belly mane developed; the yellow ish colour of the mane around the face contrasts sharply with the blackish, or pure black colouring of their mane on the neck, shoulders, throat and chest.”
There are three male lions, four lionesses and four cubs in the Ethiopian zoo. Mystery surrounds their history and presence in the East African country. It
is known that they came from the private collection of Hailie Selassie, whose dynasty called itself the Lions of Ethiopia and always kept the wild cats to h elp cultivate its image of power.
The last of the Selassie families was overthrown in a military coup and was re placed by the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1974. The lions w ere transferred to the zoo in Addis Ababa. Ebedes is the first Western veterin ary scientist to have visited the zoo since the dictatorship was replaced in t he early 1990s by an elected government.
“Given their enthusiasm for collecting lions, it is possible that Selassie obt ained the animals from a private collector or a zoo in Europe that had, in tur n, acquired them from the Cape or North Africa before these types of lion beca me extinct,” says Ebedes.
Selassie is dead, while Mariam is living in exile in Zimbabwe. Ebedes has cons ulted Ethiopian historians to see if they know how the lions came to Addis, bu t these inquiries have drawn a blank. He says the best way to begin unravellin g the riddle is to conduct comparative genetic tests on the live Addis animals and the skins of Barbary and Cape lions that exist in European museums.
Petri Viljoen, a biologist who specialises in research into the genetic featur es of South African lions, says the Ethiopian discovery offers intriguing pros pects for breeding and possibly reintroducing into the wild a species that has disappeared from record.
But he warns that the excitement in zoological circles is based, so far, only on the physical characteristics of the animals found in Addis. Viljoen says ca ptive lions are known to develop large torsos and long manes because they do n ot have to hunt in hot and dense bush. This, rather than genetic membership of a subspecies, could explain the physical characteristics of the Ethiopian lio
ns.
Professor Fritz Eloff, renowned for his research into the lions of the Kalahar i desert, says he has studied video footage taken by Ebedes of the Ethiopian p ride. “I have seen lions from all over Africa, but never such lions. They look exactly like the pictures and sketches of the Cape lion that I have seen.”
Eloff says DNA analysis is the only way to determine whether the Ethiopian lio ns come from the two extinct types of African cats. “The other important quest ion that needs to be answered is, where the lions come from? Are they Ethiopia n lions, or do they come from further north — for example, from Morocco?”
Eloff says there are records of lions that resembled the extinct Barbary lions living at a zoo in Rabat, Morocco, during the 1970s. He agrees that private c
ollectors in Europe may have kept Cape or Barbary lions and then supplied the offspring to the Selassie family.
Vratislav Mazak, a European zoologist and lion specialist, reports that the Ca pe lion was the first of the African subspecies to become extinct. It died out too soon for scientists to study it properly — making it difficult to comp
are it to the pride in the Addis zoo. Mazak’s scientific reports say there are only eight mounted skins in natural history museums in England, the Netherlan
ds, France and Germany.
Meanwhile, the owners of the Kapama private game reserve in South Africa are n egotiating with the Ethiopian government to buy some of the Ethiopian lions an d bring them back to this country.
Ebedes has suggested the Cape Public Works authorities rehabilitate the histor ical lion enclosure at the old zoo at the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town so that it can house these animals which strongly resemble the legendary cats who onc
e roamed freely on the slopes of Table Mountain.