A man who climbed into a lion enclosure and attempted to steal a pair of white lion cubs got ripped apart by the lioness instead, Ghana authorities said, BBC News reports.
According to the news outlet, the middle-aged man scaled two fences, one 10-feet tall and the other 20-feet tall, to approach the family of big cats before being killed by the protective lioness.
Authorities suspect that the man may have been after the cubs due to a rare recessive trait they both have that gives them white coats. That color is exceedingly rare in the wild, making the pair just two out of a dozen or so lions that exist in the world, according to the Global White Lion Protection Trust.
“The lions have cubs so if you come too close they may feel you are trying to take away their babies,” Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources Benito Owusu Bio said in a statement. “We ask the public to desist from doing anything like this.”
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Read the full report at BBC News.
