Friday, 12 January 2024
Dragon Dictate software incorrectly capitalizes 'tiger, 'lion' and 'jaguar'
Sunday, 3 September 2023
Private zoo owner employed emotional blackmail to raise money
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Private zoo owner employed emotional blackmail to raise money. Image: MikeB based on images on the Daily Mail website. |
Keith Evans, the owner of Lion Habitat Ranch, a private zoo in America, employed a company to fund raise for him. He blames that company for sending out a handwritten letter claiming that he would put down his big cats unless people made donations. It was a form of emotional blackmail because he was tugging at the heartstrings of people who are concerned about animal welfare.
Keith Evans runs one of America's dwindling private zoos. They are on the way out because of the Big Public Safety Act. There are far too many private Jews in America. It's a form of self-indulgent human behaviour and the victims are the big cats and other animals they keep.
Lion Habitat Ranch is home to 21 lions on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. In one letter and I presume in his handwriting, it says that, "It scares me deeply to think about what might happen if I can't afford to feed them. It's possible they would be euthanised because they simply have nowhere to go. I can't let that happen."
When he was asked by a local news station whether he would in fact kill the lions he said no that he wouldn't and he has blamed the letter on a fundraising company he has contracted with. He regrets the letter going out and has rescinded it. Although he had approved the letter.
He says that the company he uses make more from him than he makes from their fundraising. His lion sanctuary has a total income of $2.5 million for the year 2021-2022. Keith Evans paid a fundraising company, a Eberle Associates a total of $613,533, I presume, over a long period of time and Mr Evans complains that the money pays them is not good value for money.
Evans said that anyone who receives the letter should rip it up and Evans has asked Eberle Associates to stop sending out these letters.
Evans is now backtracking big time because this kind of fundraising is a public relations disaster for his lion sanctuary as it has been called. It shows how commercial they have to be. It shows us that ultimately these private zoos are commercial establishments making money for the owner and they are therefore exploiting the animals held captive at them.
All private zoos in America should be shut down, lock stock and barrel. Fortunately, Carole Baskin's Big Cat Safety Act bans the ownership of big cats in America within private zoos and therefore in the not-too-distant future they should be non-existent in America because this is a federal act governing all states. The new law allows private zoos to wind down.
Friday, 21 July 2023
Bedlam as Berlin hunts escaped lion!
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Bedlam as Berlin hunts escaped lion! Screenshot. |
Sunday, 9 July 2023
Darted lion dies during the making of a film involving Oscar winner Will Smith
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Darted lion dies during the making of a film involving Will Smith. This is almost certainly NOT the lion in question if the story is true. Image: Twitter. |
We have next to nothing on this story but I want to get in early. It is therefore an allegation at this stage. It comes from a tweet which in turn comes from an online newspaper (Sunday Standard). Neither have substantiated the story. We have no evidence that it happened. That's not to say that it did not happen.
The tweet implies that a lion was tranquillised with a dart in order to successfully capture the desired footage and died perhaps because they used too much tranquilliser. Tranquillising a big cat is tricky as you have to sedate them but not kill them. A difficult balance. Mistakes have been made before.
Will Smith won an Oscar for King Richard. He is famous for striking Chris Rock the presenter at a subsequent Oscar ceremony.
If the story is correct, this is my assessment without more information. Here is the tweet. Note tweets are sometimes pulled from Twitter for whatever reason and if that happens this embedded version will stop working.
#Lion dies after being darted during a documentary filming by #American Oscar winning Hollywood actor Will Smith in #Botswana. Once again #wildlife suffers for human greed & entertainmentš”https://t.co/axVraYJuLo pic.twitter.com/HVXZHY97Hz
— Sue Spurgin (@SueSpurgin) July 8, 2023
Wednesday, 24 May 2023
Arrogant abusive big cat owner in Europe eaten by his lions. Karma.
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Arrogant abuse big cat owner in Europe eaten by his lions. Karma. Image: NewsFlash. |
"We used to come here regularly. I saw with my own eyes how he went to the cage and fed the lions. I always asked him if he was afraid, and he just said that he had been feeding them since they were babies."One day he did not return from feeding the big cats and his family alerted the police. They discovered some human remains. Perhaps they were starving and ate part of him. The police shot two of the lions. Shame that the lions always get it when they kill humans.
A local, who only went by Peter, said:
"He was very arrogant, he didn't know how to behave, he abused the animals and they had very bad conditions."The local authority are now considering putting down the tigers and lions at the zoo as the conditions are poor. Not good. Why not find new zoos for them. So much more humane, surely? This is a very poor and inhumane decision.
He was said to be an arrogant man. A local person, Peter, said:
"He was very arrogant, he didn't know how to behave, he abused the animals and they had very bad conditions."
Monday, 15 May 2023
Do male cats kill kittens? (The disturbing truth)
There are a lot of theories about if and why male domestic and stray cats (tomcats - unneutered) kill kittens. There are different points of view about this. I've seen all those points of view and it's confusing. That is the disturbing truth! It appears to me that we are unsure about the reason and how rare it is.
I've just watched a video with the same title as this article and I don't think the person who presents that video is accurate (see video at base of page). Essentially, they say that male adult domestic cats kill kittens because they are threatening and they threaten to upset their territorial objectives. I don't believe that. I don't think kittens are threatening to adult male cats. I can't see how that can happen. So, I believe there is a lot of information on the Internet on this topic which is misleading.
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Image: MikeB |
A person I admire and respect, Sarah Hartwell, tells us that a tomcat will normally establish a territory which contains a number of female cats. I agree that. She then goes on to say that "it is in his own interest to repel other males and to destroy kittens which may have been fathered by another male and which contain the genetic complement of his rival".
She goes on to explain that a tomcat will be able to recognise his kittens through their smell and their appearance. She is more or less reciting what people say about lions in the African Savannah when they kill kittens produced by other male lions within a pride as part of the process of taking over that pride.
I'm not sure that she is correct to be perfectly honest. I tend to prefer the thoughts of another person I admire, Dr. Desmond Morris (a great zoologist and author). He states in his book Catlore that the male domestic cat has been looked upon as a sex maniac for centuries. He disagrees that tomcats (unneutered male cats) destroy the litters of kittens in order to get the females back on heat again more quickly. This, once again as a reference to how male lions behave when taking over a lion pride. He says the story has lasted "well during the past two millennia and many people still believe it".
He doesn't see any "possible biological advantage of such a reaction on the part of tomcats". He, too, appears to have got that wrong because male lions do this in order to father their own kittens in order to further their breeding line. But do unneutered domestic cats do this?
Dr. Morris likes to refer to observations of the European wildcat. He is referring to the ancestor of the domestic cat which is actually the North African wildcat but there is no difference between that subspecies and the European subspecies in terms of behaviour.
He says when you observe the behaviour of the wildcats you will see that "far from being kitten-killers, the males sometimes actively participate in rearing the young."
He adds that:
"One tom was seen to carry his own food to the entrance of the den in which a female had given birth and placed it there for her. Another tom did the same thing, supplying the female with food while she was unable to leave the nest during the first days after producing her litter."
And this tomcat became very defensive and threatened human visitors in a way that he had not done before the kittens were born. These observations took place in a zoo where he says it would be more likely to see tomcat aggression towards their young.
In the wild, cats have very large territories. The chances of a tomcat coming across a female in her den with kittens is remote. This means there is little possibility of a male cat providing parental care or parental infanticide. In a zoo which is crowded and in which the cats are in closer proximity there will be an increased likelihood of tomcat/kitten encounters where four types of reactions might occur:
- The male cat simply ignores the kittens.
- The male cat behaves paternally towards them as mentioned.
- The female attacks the male soon as he approaches her nest and drives him away before he can do anything concerning the kittens.
- The male cat kills the kittens.
The fourth reaction is the traditional one that we read about a loss on the internet. But it is, in reality, extremely rare.
Dr. Desmond Morris states that a female cat sometimes experiences a false heat a few weeks after she has given birth. This may excite a nearby tomcat. The female normally fights him off and drives him away.
The male cat is in a great state of sexual arousal at this point. He is frustrated. If he meets a small kitten at this time, he may try to mount it and mate with it.
This may be enhanced by the low crouch to posture of the kitten which is similar to the sexually responsive posture of an adult female cat.
The kitten is unable to move away quickly when the male cat mounts it which acts as a sexual signal to the overexcited male cat. This, Dr. Morris says "seals the fate of the unfortunate kitten".
The male cat does not deliberately attack the kitten but when mounting the tiny offspring he performs the normal neck bite that he employs when mating with a female in order to keep her passive. For a kitten, this feels like their mother maternally grabbing the kitten when moving them to a new den. The kitten does not struggle. Indeed, it responds by keeping perfectly still. This is the sexual signal from the adult female that tells the male that she is ready to mate.
This compounds the misunderstanding which causes disaster when the "mounted tomcat discovers that the kitten is too small for mating. He cannot manoeuvre himself into the correct position. His response to this problem is to grip the kitten's neck tighter and tighter as if he is dealing with an awkward adult mate. In the process he accidentally crunches the tiny kitten's delicate head and it dies.
Once the kitten has been killed it may trigger off a new reaction in the tomcat. Dead kittens are often devoured by their parents as a way of keeping the nest clean. As a consequence, the male cat's sexual frustrations may now lead to the kitten being eaten as a further anomaly in the feline mating sequence.
These are rare instances but they led to stories of tomcat cannibalism painting the male cat as a savage monster intent on slaughtering and eating their offspring.
Dr. Morris goes on to say that often rare events when they become established become the "norm". They become part of folklore. But they are exaggerated and over-egged stories based upon, as mentioned, extremely rare and unusual instances.
That, in a nutshell, is what Dr. Desmond Morris states about tomcat killing and eating kittens. It does happen. I will leave it to you to decide what you think is the right answer. There is one certainty; it's a rare event and people should not think that it is normal male cat behaviour.
Tuesday, 6 December 2022
Picture of a full-bellied lion cub after feeding
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Full bellied lion cub. Image: Reddit user u/asilvertintedrose on Reddit. I don't expect that this person is the photographer, however. |
This lion cub looks zonked out after feeding to the maximum on raw flesh judging by the blood on his forelegs and on his muzzle and on chin. And of course, we can't forget the belly, which is completely full, but you can't blame a lion cub for eating to the maximum because they are never quite sure when the next meal is going to arrive.
I think that it is a great picture. It is almost too good to be true and looks as though that it might have been set up but then again, the blood looks very real.
The distended belly is enormous I wonder whether he has overdone the feeding. I have never seen a lion cub with such a full belly. I think that he has eaten enough to keep him alive for a week ✔️š.
It is a convenient moment to talk about feeding. You might know that in general, lions eat enormous amounts of meat (flesh) at a sitting. One male was recorded eating 33 kg of meat during a night.
In a pride of lions, as expected, the strongest male lion will eat first followed by other members of the pride. Lionesses will feed before cubs and cubs get the scraps.
Arguably, by human standards, a lion pride is a misogynistic society because although females conduct most of the hunts the top male lion feeds first followed by the other males. As mentioned, the females feed secondly and then the cubs who have a hierarchy of their own.
Sometimes male lions tolerate showing their food with cubs.
The point being made is that as cubs get the scraps, it is unsurprising that you will see a cub as you see in the photograph on this page, fully sated after overeating because he or she has probably struggled hard to get what was available and therefore they ate the whole lot just in case there'd be a long break before the next meal.
Saturday, 27 August 2022
Lone tusker takes on 14 lionesses and wins
Astonishing and difficult to see but it is nature. Thankfully the size of the elephant and its thick hide protects it even from a marauding pride of lions. This is not a particularly large elephant but large enough to survive this attack. He walks into the river which helps to shed the attackers but he turns back to attack the primary attacking lion which allows more lions to rejoin the attack. Anyway, the elephant wins. But sometimes young elephants are brought down by a pride of lions. It can be done.
RELATED: Lions and elephants revolt against poachers in South Africa.
Lions are not very fond of water as you can see. It stopped them attacking the elephant.
RELATED: Are lions good swimmers? ‘Quite capable’ is the description.
RELATED: Do lions eat elephants?
You may have to click the play button twice to get the video to run. Google reduces the image quality automatically so it is not great but good enough.
Sunday, 22 August 2021
Cool way to get up close and personal with wild lions
NEWS AND COMMENT - HARRISMITH, SOUTH AFRICA: The Glen Garriff (GG) lion sanctuary is a non-profit organisation in South Africa which currently takes care of 77 lions which opened for business in 2002. The lions live their lives in safety and security at the sanctuary. The non-profit has social media accounts through which they raise most of their money. Their stated mission is to "love, protect and preserve the magnificent lions in our care."
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Lion experience cube at GG lion sanctuary. Photo: Suzanne Scott (presumed) via Caters News. |
The director (and a photographer) of this non-profit company, Suzanne Scott, 53, has a cage which she uses to get up close and personal with lions when she photographs them. She is using this cage to allow paying customers to her sanctuary to do exactly the same thing. And she's photographed the lions and humans interacting.
They are interesting photographs and my immediate reaction is that this is a good idea. How else do you get so close, in safety, to a genuine wild lion? And the bars are wide enough to allow a camera to be used to photograph these fabulous cats at very close range. It would be a great opportunity for an amateur photographer to get some interesting photographs. I am sure that there are strict rules though. There is still a potential for harm.
It seems social media has spread this idea to the world rather late in the day because Suzanne Scott said: "We have been offering this experience almost 2 years now and the safety of both our guests and big cats is the top priority. "
The cage originally came from a German photographer who visited regularly. They adapted the cage for customer use by making it into a "lion experience cube". A German TV company had used a plexiglass cube to film the lions and I guess they got the idea from them.
The cube is regularly checked to make sure that it is safe and that it can carry the weight of a lion or lions who jump on top of it which they appear to enjoy doing as it provides a nice vantage point.
The GG lion sanctuary is in the process of rescuing lions from a closed down zoo in the Middle East and are expected to bring another 17 lions into the sanctuary soon.
The cube is another nice source of income for them. It looks like it is an excellent idea because it benefits both the customer and the lions who are stimulated by its presence. It adds a bit of colour into their lives. It's called environmental enrichment in the domestic cat world.
Wednesday, 18 August 2021
The people and organisations who killed lion 'Mopane' a favourite among tourists
Mopane was a 12-year-old male with an enormous black mane (lionesses like black manes). He was dominant over 2 lion prides. He was well known to local guides. He was a favourite among tourists. Allegedly he was shot with a bow and arrow by an American businessman trophy hunter. He was lured out of a reserve (Hwange, Zimbabwe) into a private hunting area (Antoinette farm) where he was shot on Aug 5th 2021. He survived for one day until he was finished off with another arrow or a bullet. It is very reminiscent of Cecil's killing by Walter Palmer the Minnesota dentist.
He was killed yards from where Cecil was killed using a similar technique as you may recall some time ago. There was uproar about that as well.
Of 64 Hwange lions tagged by Oxford University 24 have been killed by trophy hunters.
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Mopane. Picture in the public domain. |
The people and organisations who worked together to kill Mopane for their pleasure or financial profit are listed below together with their photographs. PLEASE CROSS-POST THIS PAGE TO PUBLICISE WHO THESE WICKED PEOPLE ARE.
This is from a Twitter post:
ZIMBABWE LION KILLER!! MOPANE! Trophy Hunter KILLER Exposed!
- The killer who paid $30,000-$40,000 to kill Mopane: PHILLIP SMITH of 4210 Phillips Farm Rd, Suit 103 Columbia Missouri 65292 USA. He works as a physical therapist.
- The killer was guided by Dennis Nyakane of CHATTARONGA SAFARIS.
- They also used DINGUZULU SAFARIS.
- Mopane is being stuffed by Matabelel Taxidermy. His body is in salt.
Here they are:
Sunday, 8 August 2021
Romans unleashed starving lions on captives in Leicester, UK around 200 A.D.
A bronze key handle unearthed in Leicester, not far from where the remains of Richard III were found in a car park, has provided the first evidence that Roman Britain imported lions from Rome to execute captives in public places in Leicester, UK.
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Romans unleashed starving lions on captives in Leicester, UK around 200 A.D. This is the bronze key handle providing the evidence. Photo: The Times. |
The journey from Rome for the lions must have been highly arduous and it is believed that two thirds would have died. The odds were heavily stacked against them surviving. Dr. John Pearce, senior lecturer in archaeology at Kings College London mapped out how he thought the lions were transported from "those imperial parks around Rome, used for the Coliseum."
He imagined the journey by sea. He thought that they probably transported the lions to the "mouth of the River RhƓne, with the lion caged on board ship, up river to Lyons then probably a wagon journey to the river Rhine, down river and across the North Sea to London or the mouth of the Humber."
The artefact depicts an unarmed barbarian grappling with a lion. Four naked young man cower in fear according to the report in The Sunday Times newspaper of August 8, 2021. The artefact is 120 mm long (4.5 inches) and weighs just over 300 g.
Dr. Pearce was quite surprised because the experts were unsure whether lions were used in Britain to execute captives and barbarians as happened in the Coliseum in Rome. A large number of lions were imported to Rome from Mesopotamia and North Africa.
The moral decay of the Roman Empire is thought to be evidenced by the cruel execution of captives in public spectacles. That culture was brought to Britain around 200 A.D. The Roman rule of Britain ended in 410 A.D.
It is believed that some prisoners would attempt to commit suicide to avoid their agonising death by a starved lion.
Dr. John Pearce worked with Dr. Gavin Speed and Nicholas Cooper, both archaeologists from Leicester University. Their findings will be published on Monday in the academic journal Britannia.
The Barbarian depicted in the key handle resembles other portrayals in Roman Britain. The handle would have been a working part of the building. The Coliseum in Leicester would have been considerably smaller than the one in Rome.
Researchers are trying to identify the first Briton to be killed by a lion. They are analysing the remains of a gladiator found in a cemetery to the south-west of York. There are puncture wounds and they want to find out the cause.
Tuesday, 29 June 2021
The paradox and unusualness of the lion
The lion is the most famous cat in the world (with the tiger) and at the same time the least typical member of the cat family. While other cat species are solitary hunters, the lion is a cooperative group hunter or at least the lionesses are. Male lions like to hunt alone in denser vegetation using the stalk and ambush technique whereas lionesses, as you've seen in video, cooperate with wing lionesses and a central lioness when chasing prey.
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Male lions in a coalition. Photo: Daily Mail. These are black maned lions. The dark mane is attractive to females. |
This difference in the behaviour of the female and male lion is also shown in the quite stark difference between the male and female in terms of appearance. Most cats do not have great gender differences in appearance.
There will be size differences but other than that they look very similar. But with lions the huge mane of the male sets him apart from the maneless female (some females have manes). Lionesses prefer males with dark manes. They presumably sense that they are more likely to have better genes and more able to create a healthy family.
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Black knob at the end of a lion's tail and a cub who wants to play with it. Photo: Pinterest. |
And unusualness about the lion is that it is the only cat species to have a knob-like tuft of dark hair at the tip of its tail.
The paradox of the lion is that it is both the most popular animal in the world or at least in the top three. It is also the most admired with the tiger and yet trophy hunters seek to destroy it for their entertainment. And the rarer the individual lion the keener trophy hunters are to shoot it dead. It's a great paradox that there is both admiration and the desire to destroy present in the minds of these people at the same time.
And it also appears that the lion is both in the top 10 of animals loved and hated. It is loved because of its power, courage, aggressivity, dignified bearing and handsome appearance but it is also hated because it is a killer of nice animals, pleasant animals such as antelopes and zebra. The lion is a brilliant killer with huge amounts of aggressivity.
Our admiration for the lion is tinged by a fear of its ability to kill. The general consensus is that the lion wins in a lion versus tiger fight but genuine fights between these species are rare because they live in different parts of the world.
Sunday, 27 June 2021
Lion copulation information
When he is finally allowed to mate with his chosen female, which might be his daughter, he sometimes grasps the female by the neck and the typical way that we see domestic cats mate.
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Lions mating. Montage by MikeB based on images in the public domain. |
When a lion copulates, the act averages 21 seconds in duration. Across all copulations it lasts from between 8 to 70 seconds (G.B. Schaller 1972). Captive lions under observation in one study copulated 360 times in 8 days (J. Kingdon 1989).
G.B. Schaller, in his study observed one nomadic male lion mating 157 times in 55 hours. During this period, he did not eat despite the fact that some lionesses were feeding on a wildebeest about 100 meters away.
For the female, oestrus lasts on average 4 days and recurs every 2 or 3 weeks until the she conceives.
As is the case with domestic cats, when the male lion withdraws his penis is very painful because it is barbed just like the penis of domestic cats. She may twist around and attack the male who has finished copulating. This is why the males grasps her by the scruff in his jaws. This helps to pacify the female. It invokes the kitten response - the response the female desires when carrying cubs.
Females differ from other large wild cat species in that they don't advertise their impending sexual receptivity in the way other cats do with calling or by increasing their scent marking. The females don't need to do this as males in the pride are already there.
The males can figure out if a lioness is receptive by smelling her anal area and by her willingness to mate. If she's in heat or about to be in heat the male lion will attempt to stay with her.
Female lions in oestrus are restless, they roll, turn, twist and jump up and walk a few paces and lie down in front of the males who are close by. They move as the males move.
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