Archive for the 'Big cats' category

This scan of a children’s book comes from a wonderful compilation of a collection coming from between 1860 and the 1920s and assembled in a book: ‘From Mother Goose to Dr Seuss: Children’s Book Covers 1860-1960‘ by H Darling, 1999.

There are a few more covers in the set (mostly without felines, though) that you can see on Flickr and on Bibliodyssey.

photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

We usually think that a country rich of an impressive wild life like Kenya is nearly out of danger of seeing the full extinction of an emblem of Africa like the lion. This is not all so certain.

According to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), wild lions from Kenya are disappearing quite quickly: 100 lions less each year for the last 10 years. But there are no more than 2000 of them left. The last lion would so die in 20 years.

But Laurence Frank, biologist in the protection group for big cats, Panthera, believes that the KWS estimate is much too low and that the last lion in Kenya has no more than 10 years left!

The pressure applied by the human population onto the wild eco-system of Kenya already seems huge and this is compounded by a smuggling traffic small but measurable.

So, your next safari in Kenya this year may well be the last hope you have to see the king of animals.

Source: New Scientist.

A car thief probably got the surprise of his life when he grabbed the light truck from a circus. No doubt he thought he had a good one, but he got more than he bargained for: a 5-year old lion, circus star armed with a set of teeth able to recover the last remnant of honesty from the worse stealing bandit.

The German police found the wrecked truck and Caesar safe and sound. It is not known whether the thief was unable to drive or if the noises from the back of the car were more distracting than the usual mobile phone used while driving.

Source: AFP.

This is what these visitors of the Lion Safari Park in Johannesburg (South Africa) learned while they were driving slowly in this wildlife park to admire some wild animals. But, this lion found how to open their Toyota’s door with its teeth. The driver had only a few seconds to understand that the best reaction was to press the pedal deep and run away.

Lion opens car door

It would never have happened with a large American SUV, of course.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk.

Thanks to the WWF and one trap camera, we now know that tigers are still present in Sumatra. It was a place where you could find many of them, but at least there are a female and her three cubs. They will soon have to find their own territory and then the hard time will be back.

Remember: There are only 3000-4000 tigers live in the wild… in the world.

While randomly browsing old links from my bookmarks library, I found some that led me to a place I recommend to all cheetah lovers. The Cincinnati Zoo has a TwitPic account (CheetahDays) to presenter a daily photo of the zoo’s big cats. A large amount of cheetahs as you would expect, but you will also find a serval in a kitchen, an ocelot in a bath tub, some lions, …

No free wild animals, but some nice pictures.

Cheetahs prefer the front seat

Nathan Myhrvold may not be an exceptional photographer (after all, he is not known and famous for that, but he succeeded anyway), but his photo essay is a good illustrated summary of the atmosphere of an African photo safari.

Source: 3rd Culture.

Take these white tigers from the Singapore zoo. Birte Person photographed them while they were being fed.

Copyright (C) Birte Person / Solent	Copyright (C) Birte Person / Solent
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them

Source: Daily Mail.

The question must be asked. Seriously. When you look at the following picture of tourists having total fun in seeing a full grown lion rushing to their car’s hood all teethes out.

But reality is slightly simpler: These tourists do not take the slightest risk. They are merely visitors to the Werribee Open Range Zoo, in Melbourne, Australia. There, a nicely prepared presentation allows to feel the thrill of being an African prey in all security behind a thick glass window (cutting in two halves the car model).

Lions (like many cats) do not like water. Kevin Richardson established such a confidence relationship with these lions that he could convince them to go and swim with him.