Das Meinigen

HiSTORY OF THE BLACK LION

For 30 years, South African John Spence searched for descendants of the Cape lion, which was thought to be extinct in the region since the 1850s. He met with frustration after frustration. He found many lions that were close matches to the Cape lion, but none that looked exactly like the sturdy, massive animals he had read much about.
His search ended in 2000 when he received pictures of a magnificent black-maned lion at the Novosibrisk Zoo in Central Siberia.
After contacting the zoo in Siberia, Spence arranged to take two cubs of the lion, Simon, Rustislav and Olga, back with him to Africa. They are the first Cape lion look-alikes to inhabit the Cape shores in a century and a half.
and so the black maned mountain lion came to South Africa. The lions that form part of Das Meinigen are descendants of the cubs from Siberia, bred with other lions such as the Zimbabwe lion and Timbavati Lion.

WHAT MAKES THE BLACK LION UNIQUE

The Cape lion was the second largest and heaviest of the lion subspecies: a fully grown male could weigh 500 pounds (230 kg) and reach 10 feet (3.0 m) in length.[6] This lion is distinguished by his large size and his thick black mane with a tawny fringe around the face. The tips of the ears were also black.
The cross-bred lions are still bigger than the African lion found in the parks of South Africa. When they reach puberty, age 2-3 years they are bigger and weigh more than the fully grown Afican lion. They are also darker than the African lion, with a black mane that stretches from the middle of their backs all the way around across the whole of their bellies.

DAS MEINIGEN

Das Meinigen was started in October 2013 by the Wepener family of Petrus Steyn, with the arrival of Mpandla and Mamphe, named after the paternal grandparents' Sotho names.