The Heartwarming Journey of a Man and an Abandoned Lion Cub

foreign [Music] ER originally from Germany I live in Botswana now for about 14 years and I run a nature conservation program and I ended up raising a lioness over the last 10 years [Music] thank you [Music] allowed her to be able to experience Africa just like a wild line would and to be able to just live out her instincts in a way which is so important so I avoided all kinds of human structures even a tent I didn't want to near any of that she was just in the position more than a year I slept outside with her every night in her enclosure and then we just ended up walking a lot and I never tried to make it do things I never tried to train it the only thing I try to teach is when I say stop that I have enough that she actually learns to to let go in a way otherwise I would get more than a bit of a scratch on my cheek For Me Maybe [Music] I still had people with me sometimes to join on serga's walks so they were just allowed to observe what's happening while I'm out with serga and I was confident enough that Sergo would not harm anyone on that walk sugar always ran off when she sees something goes for a little Chase but she never caught anything at that time sugar ran off and we heard this screaming from an antelope obviously screaming for its life being killed by a lion everyone had told me when that line makes a first kill you're gonna not be able to be with it anymore she will change Behavior she'll become aggressive and then she just let the animal go in between and sugar came and just gave me a hug and rubbed the head on me from that moment I knew that Sega doesn't mind me going close to her kills and that was the very first one and that was also the moment when we completely stopped having other people with me on the walk and even the dog that you know so well might run off one day and it's not the end of the world because somebody will find it and bring it back but if a line runs off obviously I would have a little bit of a bigger problem so it's amazing that she's never done that I've never put it on a leash she's never been on a rope or a chain anything like that only lately since she's actually more free she has a collar on when she's outside just shoot so I can track her it's got a GPS tracker the built in extremely gentle I would say she's so careful with me in a way because not many things have happened over these years aside from small instances which were never intentionally it was just a little smack in the face or something like that so now my recent scratch which is just surga being excited giving me a hug and it's a 200 kilo animal with a lot of sharp ends that's hugging you it just happens that it hooks a little bit on your skin but she's so very caring in a way actually and careful thank you lions like domestic cats do this rubbing the head on things and lines specifically rub the heads against each other which is part of actually marking your pride marking your family and so they're spreading their own scent over each other and that's what Sergo is doing and she always liked that they actually come and do it on my head to rub the head a little bit on my head to greet me and some are out of the little line that I had to sit down and then she would come and rub her head on mine but it became this huge animal that now just stands up and still does the same things the circular is a bit of a semi-wild line she can come get food she doesn't have to if she doesn't want to I try to see her as much as I can it's at least a few times a week but try to do it every day while being out with sugar I would definitely say the favorite thing for me to do is to watch her stalk animals sometimes she can take two or three hours just to move 20 meters because she will crawl half a meter behind the next branch and then just dug down and sit there for 45 minutes without making one movement just being focused on if you Antelope that are maybe in front of us in the bush somewhere so it can take hours and hours for her to just get close enough to maybe go for a Chase and often the chase never happens because the animals noticed her or I was dumb enough to make a loud noise because I'm just next to sugar and I'm doing the same thing I'm crawling on my stomach next to her observing all this but I think it's such a privilege to be able to really watch your line behave like they do in their own habitat which she is in hunting their prey and being right there next to it that's just an amazing thing to do and it's definitely my favorite experience with her when I took I really decided that I'm going to make this a lifetime commitment at least for the lifetime of a line and one should be aware that that can be up to 20 years or even slightly more than that so that's a huge portion of someone's life to really be responsible for something and then it should be done the proper way so obviously a lion doesn't belong in somebody's backyard or the living room it belongs into the right habitat it needs huge amounts of space lion territory start it's 20 square kilometers and that is what I had to fence in for serga which wasn't only a huge job to do and just to find that land but it was also a massive Financial thing that we had to to get done some hours thankfully to a lot of donations from from people all over the world we managed to do that we have such big problems in Africa with Lion having to be killed because they are creating problems in farming areas we're running out of habitat for the wildlines that are left essentially with there's not enough room for Africa's wildlines they're shockingly fast disappearing from this continent there isn't a point to breed Lions we don't know where to put Africa's lines already and creating more lines is not going to save Africa's wild-line populations we need to save their habitat and that's something completely different

Channel: EPOCH INSPIRED

Views: 1,235,928

Keywords: lion, save, animallover

Id: C2gAmPJQjYc

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023