BHUBANESWAR: The Nandankanan Zoo welcomed five little guests on Thursday as lioness Bijli gave birth to quintuplets increasing the lion population in the zoo to 25.
Zoo officials said the nine-year-old lioness brought from Indore Zoo in 2020 gave birth to five cubs in the morning and has also accepted them. The mother and cubs are healthy and have been kept under CCTV surveillance, they said.
Nandankanan officials said Bijli delivered for the first time in 2021 giving birth to three cubs. Of them, two died while the remaining one was not accepted by the lioness owing to which it had to be hand-reared by the animal keepers.
The second litter of the lioness was in March 2022 when it gave birth to a cub Kamini. It was also hand-reared by the zoo keepers. Its third litter was in November 2022 when five cubs were born. Of them, one died while the others were cared by the mother. Two of these cubs have been handed over to Alipore Zoo in Kolkata two days back as part of an animal exchange programme.