{"id":398837,"date":"2026-01-10T07:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398837\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T07:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:31:14","slug":"meet-kito-and-anga-the-6-week-old-lion-cubs-at-the-turtle-back-zoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398837\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Kito and Anga, the 6-Week Old Lion Cubs at the Turtle Back Zoo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"anchor-d81395\" class=\"body-graf\">Surprise! It\u2019s a boy and a girl! Baby fever hit Essex County, New Jersey\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.turtlebackzoo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Turtle Back Zoo <\/a>in late November when Makena, the zoo\u2019s three-year-old lioness, gave birth to two healthy \u2014 and absolutely adorable \u2014 cubs. The organization exclusively revealed the pair&#8217;s sexes to TODAY on Jan. 8 after a year-long effort to welcome the first lion cubs born at the zoo in its over 60-year history. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-5659e7\" class=\"body-graf\">This week, TODAY viewers took to the polls to name these cute little cubs. The winners? <\/p>\n<p>Male cub: Kito in Swahili, or Precious Jewel in EnglishFemale cub: Anga in Swahili, or Sky in English <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-6f42c5\" class=\"body-graf\">Sky just happens to be Al Roker&#8217;s granddaughter&#8217;s name \u2014 and they&#8217;re both big fans of the zoo!<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-ffdeff\" class=\"body-graf\">To learn more about the cubs and their journey, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/officialturtlebackzoo\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">follow the Turtle Back Zoo on Instagram<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-888d43\" class=\"endmark body-graf\">CORRECTION (Jan. 9, 2026, 11:24 a.m.): An earlier version of this article misstated the male cub&#8217;s name. It is Kito, not Viazi.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surprise! It\u2019s a boy and a girl! Baby fever hit Essex County, New Jersey\u2019s Turtle Back Zoo in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-398837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}