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Meet Lucious, everyone. He's a lion. He acts like a lion, eats like a lion, and weighs a a good 130 pounds, but he's not your every-day one-year-old cub. According to Fox35, Lucious has a genetic disorder that effects his motor skills and his ability to walk.
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"He has his days where he's barely wobbling at all, and then he has other days where he looks like a person with ms where he shakes," says Christin Burford, the founder of The Care Foundation, Florida. The foundation is an animal sanctuary. Burford's home is inside the sanctuary, and her home is where Lucious lives.
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In short, the disorder Lucious has causes his skull and brain to develop at different speeds. "It's basically pressing on the area of the brain that takes care of the motor skills, and in addition to that, some of the vertebrae in his neck are disfigured," Burford explained. "He's on steroids to help the swelling of the spinal cord. He gets high doses of vitamin A shots once a week, and as he grows, hopefully his skull will grow a little faster, so the pressure on the brain won't be as bad."
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Burford has known Lucious basically his whole life - since he was three months old. She is “the only mother Lucious has known,” and she has done an amazing job raising him and making sure that he's happy even though he's not allowed to interact with other lions. Soon, Lucious will be around 500 pounds, and he will have an outdoor enclosure on the property.
“He's like having a big goofy dog in the house,” Burford said. "He's like the perfect house lion if you ever heard of such a thing."
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