Can you tell what's striking in the photo? The lion is white, which some biologists call it an accidental breed.
White lions have difficulty surviving with no camoflage pigment in the savanna. Easily spotted thus mostly unable to hunt for themselves, there are only 500 in the world, and 7 in true wilderness (many are in a zoo).
The first white lion was discovered in 1975 and until now only seen wild in the Timbavati region of Africa. Since then, conservatists have tried to reintroduce them to wild harems by bringing them up in semi-wilderness and trying to push them back into complete wilderness.
In a way some say, this is an act of reintroducing a gene that was not supposed to survive. However, others think that there must be a reason that nature made the white lion gene survive thus far, perhaps surviving through the ice age.
In anycase, they are extremely beautiful and look so sacred. But is that the wrong reason to work towards conserving? But maybe it's ok according to mother nature (for the beautiful and weak to survive as well) as we may enter another ice age and the weak may flip?
Photo credit: White Lions
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