If you follow the Detroit Zoo on social media, you know they have three new lion cubs. Born to lioness Amira and lion Kalu, cubs Mosi, Aziza, and Fahari were recently introduced to the public viewing habitat. The pride also includes lioness Asha.
Stateside Executive Producer Laura Weber Davis went to see the pride. She met Flo Yates, a mammal supervisor at the Detroit Zoo. Here are some snippets of that interview.
Laura Weber Davis: When does the process of knowing you’re going to breed animals and raise babies begin?
Flo Yates: Way in advance. So lions are under an SSP, which is a species survival plan, and that is through the AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) zoos. We determine genetics and personality, how to pair female lions with the male.
We got Kalu the male, the dad, here on October 31, a year and a half ago. That took a long process of introducing him to the females because the females here are really special and normal female lions and they are very tight with each other.
So introducing them to him took a long process, then them getting comfortable enough with him to breed took a while too. Once we saw successful breeding, we knew we needed to prepare for potential lion cubs.
We had three born here November 23 and 24 last year, and now they're five months old and 50 pounds. So yeah, it's been a great and special process.
LWD: When you knew that they were going to successfully breed with this male, how long do you give yourself to prepare for the potential of cubs?
FY: We're ready as soon as they're ready. We actually monitor fecals to determine hormones to see if she is in estrus, and that is when we know the male will breed with her. So, we could kind of tell based off of her previous patterns when she would breed. So when we documented that and knew when that was going to happen, we were prepared.
LWD: So the day the babies were born, what does the zoo do to, like, go into action? Or, do you just have to monitor and let mom do what she’s going to do?
FY: We do monitor 24/7 until we feel comfortable that all the cubs are nursing and active and moving around okay. And that's monitored by the management team here. And we are also in 24/7 contact with the vets. So we always have a vet on call in case we do need to intervene.
LWD: What have their personalities been like? Are they different?
FY: Oh, they're totally different. So Mosi was born first and she's actually the most confident and the first to, like, interact with stuff, but she also sticks close to her mom. She's also the blondest. Aziza was born second, another female. She's very much a daddy's girl. She's also the darkest. And then Fahari is the male, who was born last. He's very much a mommy's boy, and he's very hesitant and reluctant, and he's also the last to want to do things.
LWD: What role do baby animals play in encouraging people to come and be educated about what the zoo does?
FY: They play a role in developing social skills for our resident lions here too, because they wouldn't know what it's like to raise and take care of cubs and be introduced to babies and how that experience would be for their life as well. And it also plays a role in the fact that other zoos developing lion habitats could have space for these cubs to develop their own prides elsewhere as well.
LWD: How long will they be little and adorable and spotted like this?
FY: They don’t lose their spots for, like, two years.
LWD: So, they’re going to be cute for a while. You have time to get down here. You don’t have to rush this month, is that true?
FY: Yes. But it's still fun when they get older and bigger too, because they're just goofy and cute. People should just come here and stare at them, because it's hard to get us to get any of our work done, because we just want to stare at them all the time.
But they're super special and they're just amazing and fun to watch. And they're all just individuals, like you can totally tell just by watching them.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
