BBC Documentaries

Elsa the Lioness (1961x2)

Air date: Feb 03, 1961

David Attenborough travels to Meru National Park in Kenya to meet Elsa the lioness and her cubs shortly before Elsa's death. In the late 1950s, game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy became the carers of three orphaned cubs - Elsa, Big One and Lustica - after George had been forced to kill their mother. Big One and Lustica were eventually sent to Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands, but Elsa remained with the Adamsons. Joy's quest to train Elsa to survive in the wild and Elsa's subsequent independence became the basis for the book and film Born Free.