NAIROBI: In a rare incident of intra-species love, a lioness in a game reserve in northern Kenya took to protecting and mothering a baby antelope, until nature took its course and her protege was devoured by another lion, a tour official said on Monday.

He said the lioness, which had adopted the little oryx at the Samburu reserve in northern Kenya and looked after it for two weeks, tried unsuccessfully to fight off a lion that killed and ate it on Sunday.

The female big cat, which would usually have preferred to gobble up an oryx, had lived with the young antelope as if it was its own offspring since the two met in the bush two weeks ago, tour official Lmakiya Lesarge said.

Cases of lionesses showing maternal affection for young animals that they would normally see as prey were not unprecedented, conservationist Daphne Sheldrick said.

However, what was unusual in this case was that the oryx calf would go to its real mother, which kept at a respectful distance from the lioness, to suckle and then return to its feline protector for love and affection.

Lesarge said the two animals probably met when the lioness chased the oryx’s mother.

“Motherly instinct prevailed” on the part of the lioness, said Sheldrick, who is renowned for caring for orphaned young animals.

“This is not unprecedented, it does happen, but it’s quite unusual,” said Sheldrick, who heads the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, named after her late husband David, a founder warden of the southern Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park.

Sheldrick told the story of a baby zebra brought to her orphanage two years ago after it was found in the company of a lioness which had devoured its mother the day before.

“Lions, like all the other species, including human beings, have this kind of feelings for babies. This one, I think, felt sorry for this baby,” she said.

She said the young oryx should have been separated from the lioness.

“But this story could only have this kind of bad ending. People should have brought the oryx back to the mother.”

The Daily Nation reported that game wardens of the Samburu County Council had chosen not to separate the two animals, preferring instead to “let nature take its course”.

Officials of the Kenya Wildlife Service said they had planned to send scientists to Samburu to carry out research on the unusual show of affection between the two animals when they heard that the baby oryx had been killed.

Press photographs showed the lioness and the young oryx walking or lying together.—AFP