Get ready to OD on cute: White lion cubs debut at European zoos, circus

The impossibly cute white lion cubs born in July in Las Vegas seem to have set off a lion cub boomlet at zoos and a circus in Europe.

Earlier this month, a pair of white lion cubs less than a month old were displayed for the first time at the Belgrade Zoo in Serbia. Discovery News said the babies had been rejected by their mother and were being bottle-fed by zookeepers.

Also this month, two lion cubs were born at a private zoo in Borysew, Poland, the zoo announced. The mom, Azira, had given birth to triplets in January. She too rejected her latest cubs, according to media reports.

And in August, the Circus Krone, which tours Germany, said its lion, Princess, had given birth to three males and a female.

The trendsetters of this baby boomlet: Freedom, Madiba and Timba-Masai, white lions born in South Africa that now live at Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage in Las Vegas.

White lions are not albino but the result of a genetic mutation, according to the Global White Lion Protection Trust formed in 2002. They are native to the Timbavati and Kruger Park areas of South Africa.

The organization says white lions in the 1970s were given to zoos for captive breeding programs, diminishing native populations. The trust works to reestablish the animals in their natural South African setting.