In the hills west of Tokyo, three lionesses have died at Tama Zoological Park — not from disease or age, but from heat, the same force hospitalizing tens of thousands of Japanese people this summer. Though lions evolved beneath the African sun, it is the humid, sudden ferocity of Japan's record-breaking heat that proved fatal, arriving too quickly after the rainy season for the animals to adapt. Their deaths are a quiet but pointed reminder that climate change does not distinguish between the wild and the captive, the human and the animal — it reshapes the conditions of survival for all.
Three lions die of heatstroke at Tokyo zoo as Japan battles record heat
Three lionesses died from heatstroke; multiple other lions remain under treatment for heat-related illness.