Authorities have not yet found the animal, and have no idea where it came from — Berlin, even in summer, isn’t exactly a lioness’s natural habitat. But the bigger mystery? None of the zoos, circuses and other animal facilities in the area had reported a missing creature.
Daniel Keip, a spokesman for Brandenburg’s West Police Directorate, told local radio station rbb that the two men who made the call said they saw an animal chasing another: “One was a wild boar and the other was apparently a big cat, a lioness. The two gentlemen also took a cellphone video, and even experienced police officers had to confirm that it’s probably a lioness.”
“Where this lioness comes from, we do not know at present,” Keip said in a telephone interview Thursday. As of 1 p.m. local time, the force still hasn’t found the animal, Kleinmachnow’s mayor, Michael Grubert, told a news conference.
Keip said the Twitter video below shows the animal in action.
Andrea Metzler, a spokeswoman for the Potsdam-Mittelmark municipality in Brandenburg where Kleinmachnow is located, said in a telephone interview that authorities believe the escaped animal was kept illegally by a private owner. A veterinarian and two hunters with weapons are searching for the animal, she said, explaining that any decision on whether to anesthetize or shoot it would depend on the situation when it is found.
While rules on owning exotic pets vary across the world, a 2020 U.N. report found that wild animals, including protected species, are still being illegally trafficked to fulfill peoples’ demand for exotic pets, or animal parts. In 2019, The Washington Post reported that there may be more tigers in captivity in the United States than in the wild, with only patchy oversight on their breeding and trade.
Lawyer Viktor Winkler told German news magazine Focus that the laws on keeping a lion as a pet vary across Germany, and that some states grant exceptions in very limited cases — but this is not the case in Berlin.
Police — in phone alerts, social media posts and public loudspeaker announcements — warned residents in parts of Brandenburg and the neighboring state of Berlin to avoid leaving the house and to keep any pets indoors. Grubert, Kleinmachnow’s mayor, said Thursday that kindergartens remained open, but authorities had requested that they keep all children on campus. He told people not to go out for walks, “and especially not to go jogging in the forest.”
Police said they deployed more than 30 vehicles, as well as helicopters, to join their search. Riot police were also dispatched to protect local residents, police said.
In a statement released about 12 hours after the call first arrived, Keip said the search was focusing on three municipalities that directly border southern Berlin.
Berlin Zoo confirmed in an emailed statement that the animal neither came from its own collection nor the city’s other major zoo, Tierpark Berlin. According to the statement, the zoo’s experts said that a lioness would be able to survive in local forests during the summer months, and would be likely to retreat into the undergrowth and avoid contact with humans in unfamiliar areas.
People should immediately seek shelter and call police if they see the animal, authorities said.
