(Pic: Alipore zoo)

Three newborn lion cubs, each no bigger than an adult palm, are cuddling up to their mother in a corner of Burdwan House at Alipore zoo.

Sruti, a six-year-old Asiatic lioness, is not letting anyone near her babies, not even keepers with decades of experience in handling big cats. She is frequently licking her litter, occasionally picking one up in her mouth and taking it from one corner of the night shelter to another.

The cubs have zoo officials beaming but anxious as well. Sruti had given birth to a cub in September last year but the underweight baby had trouble feeding and died within four days.

That had been the first lion cub born at Alipore zoo since 1992.

Once Sruti became pregnant again this March, she was separated from her partner and the father of the cubs, Viswas. The pair had been brought to Alipore zoo in October 2017.

A team of two experienced keepers and three vets had been taking care of the lioness round the clock. The usual gestation period for a lioness is around three-and-a-half months.

“The cubs were delivered at 9.04am, 10.12am and 10.24am on June 28,” said V.K. Yadav, member-secretary of the Bengal Zoo Authority.

(Pic: Alipore zoo)

The cub born last was weaker than the rest and had difficulty feeding from the mother after the first two days, a zoo official said.

The keepers had to outmanoeuvre Sruti to feed the weaker cub. The cub, feeding from a bottle since Sunday, is being monitored through CCTV cameras, the official said.

“We waited for 10 hours before intervening,” said Asis Kr Samanta, the director of Alipore zoo.

There is a gate in the middle of the night shelter — where the lioness and her cubs are housed — that can be opened and shut with the help of a winch from the top.

The keepers are looking out for moments when Sruti is busy tending to the other two cubs and shutting the gate to feed the youngest cub before opening it again.

The third cub is now slightly better, although still weak, a veterinarian said. “The cubs have started crawling already and will gain eyesight in about a week. They are expected to start walking in two weeks,” he said.

Sruti is on a diet of chicken, buffalo meat and calcium supplements.

“For the first 48 hours, she did not leave her cubs even for a minute. She hardly ate anything, only drank water,” Samanta said.

The lioness and her partner had been brought to Alipore zoo because the other two lions at the park were more than 20 years old.

“The ageing lions had been kept at the zoo hospital for age-related ailments and have since passed away,” Samanta said.

The lion enclosure at the zoo, built with a donation from the Maharaja of Burdwan in the late 19th century, underwent a makeover before the new pair’s arrival.