A baby oryx that had been adopted by a lioness for two weeks in a national game reserve was yesterday devoured by a lion.

The lion snatched the baby oryx from the lioness and ate it greedily. This happened at the Samburu National Reserve where a lioness took an oryx from its mother and nursed it for two weeks while protecting it from other predators.

The Samburu Lodge General Manager, Mr Simon Mburu, said the lioness had gone without food to ensure that the calf was safe but became too weak to save it from the hungry lion. Mburu said the occurrence was extraordinary as the lioness defied all rules of predator-prey relationship.

"It defied nature and took care of the baby oryx as its very own," said Mburu.

But stranger than fiction, was the fact that the baby oryx was not orphaned. Its mother was available and was allowed by the lioness to come to the staying point to breast-feed it and after which the mother could be scared away as the lioness took charge.

The lioness went without food for two weeks and became frail due to hunger. To save this relationship, the Block Hotels management started feeding it, but other predators could not stand the sight of "food going to waste".

It was at this moment that the lion snatched the oryx from the lioness and ate it hungrily.