Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Last refuge for the king of beasts

— Photo: A. Muralitharan

Lost pride: Two lions, rescued from circuses, at the Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre of Arignar Anna Zoological Park, Vandalur.

CHENNAI: Lakshmi and Jimmy have had it tough. They have never known their families and have spent much of their lives suffering intolerable cruelty at the hands of strangers. They have been forced to live their lives in public spotlight, performing in front of hundreds of strange eyes every night and have always been alone, outsiders, to even their own kin.

That they both happen to be 200-kg lions shouldn’t matter to the poignancy of their story. Rescued from the Rayman circus, they now live at a Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, set up on the edge of the Arignar Anna Zoological Park in Vandalur.

The centre is home to 45 other lions, as well as seven tigers, all of whom share similar stories.

“When we first got these animals, they were skinny and bony, and very badly injured,” says Thirumurugan, a veterinary assistant at the centre. Mr. Thirumurugan says these animals have been subjected to extraordinary cruelty — branding iron rods have been used on them by circus trainers, many of them have been permanently maimed and some even blinded. The animals have been cruelly starved and savagely beaten.

The centre is a refuge for animals rescued from circuses across the region, including Raymon, Gemini, Kohinoor and Great Bombay circuses, according to the centre’s records.“In a circus, five to six of these big cats are forced to live in a tiny wooden box where they have to eat, sleep and even defecate, with hardly any room to breathe,” Thirumurugan says. Here, there are 40 cells for the lions, where they are fed, washed and given close medical attention.

All 47 lions here are hybrids — circuses often cross-breed African and Asiatic lions, believing for some reason that the hybrids are more impressive on the eye.

As a consequence of their origins, these lions can never be set loose in their natural habitat. They will not be accepted by wild lions and their groups, or prides.

Biologists say these animals should not reproduce, as they reckon that cross-breeding between the two varieties adversely affects the animals’ gene pool. Consequently, all 47 lions have been vasectomised.

Social relations are extremely important to a lion’s behavioural patterns, more so than for any of the other ‘big cats’. Tigers, by contrast, do not form social groups and often wander around alone.

“Lions are very gregarious animals,” says Mr. Thirumurugan. At the centre, the lions are let out into the paddock areas in groups; the groups are put together depending on how compatible a particular animal is with the others in the group. So in a sense, these lions, outsiders to their kin in the wild, have found their own prides here.

But the fact is that these lions will never be freed from the curse that is their circus upbringings. Their hybrid genes render them alien to their own species.

Many of these animals are also injured, and the circus environment in which they have been brought up has not allowed them to develop hunting skills that will allow them to survive in their natural habitat.

Sadly, all 47 lions will spend the rest of their days at the centre; they will never be free. The environment that the centre provides for them, while far from perfect, is in some ways the next best realistic option for the animals.

Besides the physical comfort and close medical attention the animals receive here, they finally have a sense of belonging.

Lakshmi and Jimmy will die in captivity. But not alone.

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