Introducing Kojo and Tau, 2 African Lion Cubs

Posted: 29th November, 2018

The two new-born African Lion cubs at Noah’s Ark have been named.

Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in the outskirts of Bristol has had two tiny new additions to their pride of Lions. The cubs were born early morning on 20th August, the day before lioness Arusha’s birthday. Arusha has never successfully reared a litter of cubs and so the keepers gave her space to raise the cubs without intervention, allowing the precious mother and cub bonds to develop.

Arusha arrived at Noah’s Ark in March 2014 and was paired up with the zoo’s male Lion, Masai. The couple have been together for 4 years but due to a contraceptive implant have yet to rear cubs. The implant has since worn off and 8 year old Arusha is now the proud mother to 2 little cubs.

At the start end of October the cubs were 10 weeks old they needed their first set of vaccinations. It was also important that the vet could give the cubs an initial health check. It was not an easy task to separate mum from the two cubs, however the experienced keepers enticed Arusha away with some food whilst they carefully checked the two cubs over. The cubs were weighed at 10.75kg and 12.5kg, and the vet listened to their heartbeats. She was also able to check the sexes of the two cubs and found out the zoo had two boys.

The next stage for the zoo was to name the two cubs and they decided to open it up to a public vote. Parents Masai and Arusha, are both named after places in Africa and the keepers at Noah's Ark wanted to stick to this African theme.The winning names were chosen by the keepers and the two boys are now called Kojo, meaning 'born on a Monday' and Tau, the African word for 'lion'. 




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