The white lion lives in the Tábor zoo. He has a very rare genetic mutation – News

Gandalf, who was born in Holland, is six years old, the lion is a year older. From a young age, they lived in a private kennel with Ivy Lapková Zelinová in Jindřichohradeck. She also kept American cougars or lynx on her property for many years. But her breeding license expired and the animals lived in small spaces. So state officials banned her from breeding, and gradually the animals are placed elsewhere.

According to zoologists, the white lion Gandalf is very rare. His color is not caused by albinism, but by a very rare genetic mutation called leucism, which is the loss of all types of skin color, not just melanin.

“White lions live in the wild in one place in the world, in the Timbavati region next to the Kruger National Park in South Africa. According to the Global White Lion Protection Trust, less than twenty of them live in the country,” said Evžen Korec, director of the Tábor Zoo. A slightly larger population remains in the world’s zoos, and now also in the South Bohemian one.

The nurses carried Gandalf and the lion to the Camp in special crates. Gandalf was a little nervous and didn’t really want to leave the cage, but eventually he entered the new enclosure with a typical lion roar. “They will both be in the same enclosure with us, they are used to each other,” said Eva Nemravová, a nurse at the Tábor Zoo.

For centuries, indigenous African tribes have considered white lions as star creatures, a gift from the gods. Scientists did not believe that they existed for a long time and they saw them as part of native African legends.

“The first sighting of a white lion dates back to 1938, and it was even photographed for the first time in the 1970s. Because of their uniqueness, poachers targeted them. Since 1994, not a single white lion has been seen in the country and they were considered extinct. That changed in 2006, when white lion cubs were born in the Timbavati Reserve, and in 2014 they also appeared for the first time in the nearby Kruger National Park,” said Korec.