Blackpool Zoo has welcomed three African lion cubs, its first lion births in a decade. The triplets, born on 26 July to first-time parents Hira and Khari, are significant for the zoo’s breeding programme and mark a new chapter after recent losses in Khari’s family.

Khari was himself the zoo’s previous lion cub, born in 2015 to Rachel and Wallace. After Rachel died when he was six months old, Khari and Wallace became the UK’s only father-and-son male lion pair until Wallace’s death in 2022; Khari later returned following the opening of Blackpool Zoo’s £1.5 million Big Cat Habitat in 2023.