Twin cubs revel in the limelight

Lion cubs Lea and Luca delight tourists at Rotorua's Paradise Valley Springs. Picture / Alan Gibson

They're cute, they enjoy a cuddle and love the limelight.

Ten-week-old cubs Lea and Luca are lapping up the attention from visitors to Rotorua's Paradise Valley Springs, where they are the first litter in five years.

Everyone is a potential playmate. The twins tumble together, run around and frolic with their toys in the two-week-old enclosure - dubbed "daycare" by the minders.

After eight-year-old mother Rio's milk dried up when the little lion cubs were only three weeks old, they were syringe-fed by staff and are the youngest cubs ever to have been brought up on milk formula at the long-established wildlife park.

The roly-poly pair are now down from eight to three feeds a day.

"They like us better than their mother now," says attendant Hayden Sanders.

"With no milk, all Mum is good for is cleaning and they don't really like being clean. They cry when we put them back with her at night and they are happy to see us in the morning." A comfortable pen built off the ground in the centre of the enclosure is for "time out" which - rather than for misbehaviour - usually means a peaceful nap when all the activity wears them out.

As the cubs romp clumsily with an old boot and a paper-stuffed sock on a string, Mr Sanders says fondly: "They're gorgeous, aren't they?"

Visitors are warned the little lions, whose claws are kept clipped, don't like having their heads patted or being approached full-on. But they love having their bellies rubbed.