KARACHI: A Pakistani baby goat named Simba, who was attempting to break the world record for the longest ears, passed away in the southern province of Sindh after a brief illness last week.
Simba was born on June 4, 2022, in Karachi, where he also took his last breath on April 11. Despite a brief life that spanned 10 months and 11 days, the baby goat made global headlines due to the extraordinary length of his ears.
Simba’s owner now plans to apply for the same record by entering the goat’s younger sister, Simbi, into the competition. Simbi was recently born with long and drooping ears.
“The sorrow of Simba’s death is immense, but so is the joy of Simbi’s arrival,” Muhammad Hasan Narejo, 31, who owned the deceased baby goat, told Arab News. “Simba’s cause of death is not known. On April 11, he had sudden pain in his stomach, and he passed away after a few hours.”
Last year, Narejo applied for the Guinness Book of World Record, but their team did not arrive to measure Simba’s ears.
“They receive millions of applications and prioritize paid applications over regular ones,” he explained. “The process takes a lot of time that can go up to a year or more. Simba’s application was in process, but it could not reach the Guinness Book of World Record team.”
On April 4, only a few days before Simba’s death, the baby goat’s mother delivered a female kid, which was named Simbi.
“Simba was born with 48-centimeter-long ears, which grew by 82 centimeters by the time of his death,” Narejo informed. “Simbi was also born with 45 centimeters of ears.”
Much like her deceased brother, Simbi has light brown skin, though it has white patches on it.
The owner allowed news coverage of both siblings, but he did not permit coverage of the mother since he feared the “evil eye.”
The mother of the two baby goats belongs to the Lady breed, which generally has long ears, even though they are not so remarkably long.
“The mother goat lives at my farm somewhere,” Narejo said. “However, Simbi is in Karachi. I cannot bring the mother here due to the evil eye.”
He said he had received plenty of offers from different parts of the world from people who wanted to buy Simba.
“The top offer was from a person in Saudi Arabia who wrote a blank cheque, which I refused,” he said, adding he did not regret his decision. “I am still happy because it is my passion [to keep goats], not a business,” he added.
“Simba left the world while I was holding him in my lap. So, I am satisfied.”
Narejo named Simba after watching “The Lion King,” an animated Disney movie.
“Simba means a lion,” he said. “However, we gave the name Simbi [to the female baby goat] to honor her brother. That is why we named her Simbi so we always remember Simba.”
