The Not So Mannerful Lions.

Saw a documentary on National Geography today. A very good one.

It highlighted the gastronomical aspect of lions in Africa.

The lioness gave birth to eight new cubs in the family with seven male cubs. While the female cub would remain a part of the family the males would be asked to leave as they grew up.

Everyday is a struggle to survive for the new cubs as they learn the art of attacking and mauling their victim slowly but steadily. The victims normally are baby elephants or wild buffaloes.

On one such scene where a baby elephant hurt while a hubbub took place in jungle was left by its herd to die. It couldn't keep pace with its herd. It moved slowly throughout the night to be seen by the pride of lions in the day time. Nothing could save the poor baby elephant.

The lions slowly attacked. It's the mother lion who takes lead while hunting the prey. Usually she kills the animal caught by biting on the nerve on its neck. But unusually she leaves the prey alive with tremendous hurt while her cubs learn to chew on the victim and eat it without killing. The baby elephant went into coma while the lions began feasting on it.

A terrible scene for normal human being but perhaps uncommon for the not so mannerful lions. To eat an animal while it is still alive really showed the not so mannerfulness of the lions. Perhaps that's the way it prefers things sometimes. But it tried to save its energy on preying and killing the baby elephant hard when it was such a soft target.

Now that looked very similar to many a human beings . Atleast the lions are wild what about humans? Hurting, causing mayhem, killing soft targets are also done by humans. What differentiates a human being from an animal are his instincts, his highly developed mind and his ability to think superior than other animals. But you would still find that there remains a great similarity between animals and humans . While we have come up a lot as a developed society but you can still hear instances of animal instincts in human beings. Perhaps because human beings have evolved from animals. And humans are most brilliant but cunning animals.

The cubs of lions grew up to learn that soft targets are very few and to feed themselves in future they will have to depend highly on preying. They cannot always afford to be not so mannerful and will have to systematically prey. They learn the art from their mother for two years before they part to other parts of jungle to establish their own rule.

But if I ponder on the way one would differentiate them, at times the lions looked better than humans.