Asia africa lion
The Asia-Africa lion is a big cat hybrid of Asiatic and African lions . This lion hybrid is the result of a breeding program in India with the aim of creating another public attraction for the Chhatbir Zoo in Chandigarh and at the same time securing the population of the Asiatic lion. However, no further hybrids have emerged since the program ended in 2000.
Asiatic lions were crossed with a pair of African lions in the early 1980s. The hybrid animals created in this way were able to reproduce , but also prone to infectious diseases and generally weakened. The hind legs were not strong enough to run and other negative symptoms occurred.
This could point to postzygotic isolation mechanisms (which would mean that Asiatic and African lions belonged to different species and are not subspecies of a common species), but more likely that at least some of the problems are due to inbreeding from poor breed management in a small breeding population. That would mean that the problems did not arise from the start, but only during the course of the breeding program. The founding population of this hybrid breed line was only five, and the animals were vigorously reproduced and sold as purebred Asiatic Lions within Asia and the United States.
At the end of the breeding program, the males were sterilized . The Asia-Africa lion is said to disappear naturally as Indian law forbids killing the animals. Of the originally up to 80 lions, 21 animals still lived in the zoo in 2006. Hubert Lücker, Acting Managing Director of the Association of German Zoo Directors , explained that there was no need to “cross lion subspecies with each other just to quickly raise their populations”.
Indian authorities have decided on a conservation breeding program for pure Asiatic lions to begin after the mixed lion population in the zoo dies.
source
- Asia-Africa lions are set to become extinct , Spiegel Online , September 18, 2006