No Twitter, the lion that has been shot dead was not Cecil the lion's brother Jericho

Reports of Jericho, a brother of Cecil, Zimbabwe's best known lion who was hunted last week, being killed on 1 August were untrue. However, the name of the second lion killed has not been revealed yet.

Sources at the national parks agency said that a foreign hunter, whose nationality hasn't been disclosed yet, killed the second lion illegally on July 3, Reuters reports. The hunter had since left Zimbabwe, but police had recovered the lion's head and carcass.

The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF) said on Facebook earlier on 1 August that Cecil's brother, Jericho, was shot at 4pm. "We are absolutely heart broken," the statement said.

"I think this type of misinformation is characteristic of that particular source," field researcher at Hwange Lion Research, Brent Stapelkamp said. He added that he had put the collar on Jericho and was monitoring his data on 1 July and he was confident that Jericho is "alive and well".

Stapelkamp said he would be checking in on the data again and that he has been asked to go and look for him to confirm that he is alive and send pictures to the world.

Trevor Lane of the Bhejane Trust, a wildlife conservation group that works with Hwange national park, said that Jericho had been seen with a female, "probably mating". Lane added that parks were investigating another lion that was shot on 2 July, though that animal was neither collared, nor with a pride.