Lion down on the job

Lion, originally uploaded by andyskelton-a Blog a day http://andrewskelton.net.

Lions… what more can I say about them… well, actually this experience far outweighed that of the male (and female) lion encounter. Unlike humans, the male lion is incredibly lazy and it’s the females who do all the work, bringing up the kids, going out and getting food, erm.. oh… perhaps there are some similarities after all.

We were lucky enough to encounter a pride of 21 females and cubs during and afternoon game drive, and even more lucky to see them active. A couple of the young cubs were either feeling mischievous or were actively bonding with the matriarch, combined with good light, well it was a photographer’s dream. I particularly liked watching mother and cub interacting, one of a batch of photos having been uploaded to Flickr (see here), for several minutes the mother licked the cub and then seemed to put it’s paw across it. I know that naturalists hate any form of anthropomorphism, but there was a look of genuine affection on both mother and child during this time.

This isn’t the only example of animals and emotions but I’m going to save that for another day; suffice it to say, I think more goes on in animals minds than we give them credit for, if anything it’s us who are a bit slow on the uptake. That’s it for tonight, so long, and thanks for all the fish!

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