Lion cubs draw crowds at Pakistan zoo
STORY: “Children are especially very excited to see the cubs. Entire families are coming, and they keep coming again and again,” said Mohammad Asif, a caretaker at the Safari Zoo Lahore, as the cubs playfully romp inside their enclosure.
According to the zoo's Deputy Director Ghulam Rasool, the birth of the cubs, now aged between two and three and a half months, has brought the number of lions present in the zoo to 40, and added that of the 242 acres the zoo covers, 30 acres are given to the lions who are able to “roam freely”.
Criticism of zoos in Pakistan and the conditions animals there are kept in have resurfaced recently following the death of an elephant that had fallen into a pond and had become critically ill. In recent years two lions died of asphyxiation in Pakistan after handlers tried to get them out of their den using smoke, and a number of white tiger cubs have also died.
