A healthy six-week-old female lion cub has been discovered on a child’s bed in a southern Paris apartment and a 30-year-old man has been arrested.
French newspaper Le Parisien reports the man was found hiding in a cupboard in his neighbour’s apartment where he had fled with the cub when police turned up on Tuesday.
Police were alerted to the cub’s existence after seeing videos on social media suggesting a man was wanting to sell the cub for €10,000 ($16,200).
The cub is now in the hands of France’s National Agency for Hunting and Wildlife.
In a separate incident, a jogger found a lion cub in a cage dumped in a field near Tienhoven between Utrecht and Hilversum in the Netherlands on October 7.
The cub, a male believed to be about five months old, was being cared for by Stichting Leeuw (Lion Foundation), which looks after big cats.
Police appealed on Twitter for help in tracing the animal’s owner.
Val-de-Marne : un lionceau retrouvé dans un appartement https://t.co/nOqHCwXWx1
— Le Parisien (@le_Parisien) October 23, 2018
