The world’s first “out of the tube” lion cubs were born in South Africa
Two lion cubs Victor and Isabel were born in the Ukutula Wildlife Conservation Center in Pretoria (South Africa).
The little ones are completely healthy and seemingly are no different from other lions, but now they are receiving increased attention from the whole world, as they are the first lion cubs in the world born after artificial insemination, that is, “out of the tube”.
Over the past 20 years, lions have been completely exterminated in 26 countries in Africa and their total number in the wild has fallen by 43%, so artificial insemination is a very important method in restoring their numbers.
Lion cubs were born on August 25 and now they are almost 2 months old. To ensure that they were born safely, a lot of work was done.
First, preparation was carried out for 18 months. They looked for a suitable male and female and did a variety of analyzes. It should have been healthy animals with good genes.
Then they artificially extracted the seed of the lion, checked its quality and introduced it to the female. Several attempts were made just in case, but perhaps the very first was successful, the lioness soon became pregnant.
The technique is good in that it is not necessary to transport males to females and vice versa, it is enough just to receive seed from males and fertilization can be carried out anywhere in the world. It has been successfully used for many other animals for many years, but it has not been tried on big cats yet.
Source: http://goodnewsanimal.ru/news/
