Maternal instinct: for the first time, a wild lioness is seen nursing a baby leopard
Touching encounter in Serengeti astonishes experts – but it is unlikely to have a happy ending
Luke Hunter, president and chief conservation officer of the global wildcat organisation Panthera, received an email this week from one of his group’s partners in Tanzania. When he opened the attached photos, Hunter recalled, “my jaw just dropped.”
The images show a lioness lounging on a flat, dry spot in the Serengeti. Attached to her is a nursing cub – and the cub is a tiny, spotted leopard.
This is the sort of sighting is astonishing to lion experts like Hunter. Interspecies suckling has been documented among captive animals, and on very rare occasions wild carnivores such as leopards and pumas have been known to adopt an orphaned cub of their own kind, usually one that is related. But never before has interspecies suckling among large carnivores been recorded, Hunter said.
“It’s unprecedented,” he said, almost gushing. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
The photos were taken Tuesday by a guest at the Ndutu Lodge in the Ngorogoro Conservation Area, where KopeLion, which Panthera supports, works on quelling conflicts between lions and local farmers whose livestock sometimes become lion lunch. KopeLion monitors the area lions, which is why the nursing mom in the photos is wearing a GPS tracking collar.