She died as local sentiment had begun to turn against Elsa and her cubs, forcing the Adamsons to consider moving them. Elsa’s grave is in the Meru National Park. The life of Elsa and her cubs is covered in the book Living Free, published not long afterwards.Įlsa died prematurely of a form of babesiosis, a tick-borne blood disease similar to malaria which often infects the cat family. When Elsa was three years old, she brought three cubs of her own to show to the Adamsons, whom the Adamsons named "Jespah" (male), "Gopa" (male), and "Little Elsa" (female). Her efforts paid off, earning Elsa worldwide fame at the time, when her early life’s story was published in the book Born Free. Indeed, after sending the other two to a zoo, Joy was fiercely determined to give Elsa the education she needed to hunt and live in the wild. While Elsa lived in many ways like a domesticated pet when she was small, Joy Adamson, whom Elsa trusted the most, considered her relationship with Elsa to be that of equals. George and his wife Joy then adopted the lioness’s four-day-old cubs. George only later realised why the lioness had acted so aggressively towards him. Her story is told in several books by the Adamsons, as well as the 1966 motion picture Born Free.Įlsa and her sisters were orphaned on 1 February 1956 after George Adamson was forced to kill their mother when she charged him, in defence of her three cubs. Though her two sisters eventually went to the Netherlands' Rotterdam Zoo, Elsa was trained by the Adamsons to survive on her own, and was eventually released into the wild. 28 January 1956 – 24 January 1961) was a female lion raised along with her sisters "Big One" and "Lustica" by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy Adamson after they were orphaned at only a few days old.
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