Lioness spotted feeding a lonely leopard cub (photos)

While most Lioness often kill baby leopards once they spot any,  a recent photo of a lioness feeding a leopard cub has moved the world.Luke Hunter, president and chief conservation officer of the global wild cat organization Panthera, received an email this week from one of his group's partners in Tanzania. When he opened the attached photos, Hunter recalled, "my jaw just dropped."The images show a lioness lounging on a flat, dry spot in the Serengeti. Attached to her is a nursing cub — and the cub is a tiny, spotted leopard.This is the sort of sighting that is pretty much mind-blowing to lion experts like Hunter. Interspecies suckling has been documented among captive animals, and on very rare occasions wild carnivores such as leopards and pumas have been known to adopt an orphaned cub of their own kind, usually one that is related.But never before has interspecies suckling among large carnivores been recorded, Hunter said (and he checked the literature)."It's unprecedented," he said, almost gushing. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime event."The photos were taken Tuesday by a guest at the Ndutu Lodge in the Ngorogoro Conservation Area, where KopeLion, which Panthera supports, works on quelling conflicts between lions and local farmers whose livestock sometimes become lion lunch. KopeLion monitors the area lions, which is why the nursing mom in the photos is wearing a GPS collar.The five-year-old lioness lies unperturbed as the small leopard, estimated to be a few weeks old, nurses in the photographs taken Tuesday by a guest at a lodge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.While the arrangement is unusual, Hunter says there’s nothing physiologically that should prevent the lion from raising the leopard. Both species produce similar milk and undergo comparable nursing periods. But these are not the only factors to consider.Hunter said the leopard cub is unlikely to find acceptance from the lioness' peers."It is very unlikely that the lioness' pride will accept it," he said. "Lions have very rich, complicated social relationships in which they recognize individuals -- by sight and by roars -- and so they are very well equipped to distinguish their cubs from others. If the rest of the pride finds the cub, it is likely it would be killed.""Even its early exposure to lion society would not override the millions of years of evolution that has equipped the leopard to be a supreme solitary hunter," he said. "I am sure it would go its own way."