Just some pictures regarding our experience with we had yesterday with walking the lions.
All in all and I know I have said this before, I felt like I betrayed my own principles, the lions were not there to grow up to be released back into the wild but to be entertaining for the tourists, If I would have known in advance I would have not done it.
However, and leaving alone the fact that the "trainers" have to be quite rough with them at times, they have a huge area to play out their dominance, it's a lot better than I have seen in many zoos.
At the end when one of the trainers made the female and the male lion pose for some other couple that came with us on the walk and the male lion looked down and not up into the camera and the trainer who took the photo slightly kicked him in the chin to look up I finally had enough (I just have a temper and I hate I absolutely hate when animals are mistreated) so I had quite a meltdown with he guys who could hardly speak English and who kept smiling and assuring me that everything was just right.
It was mostly embarrassing for the other couple and my wife but just cannot tolerate certain behaviour and I think a real man says what he wants and thinks.
So when we were back from our walk and the "white" owner if the business (he was from south Africa and looked like an older version of Crocodile Steven) asked us how it was I didn't complain and hope instead that the guys who "train" these animals don't use their feet.
I'm not a delusional PETA idiot who thinks live is an endless Disney movie, but I have been working with animals for quite some time and I still believe there are certain animals that should not be trained but left as their are.
I asked them how they going to run the business in the future, obviously their lions are growing fast and as you guys can see from the pictures they are already quite big and only 18 month old.
The answer was that they will change the advertisement picture and make a movie assuring people that they have nothing to fear, but anybody who has a slight understanding of Apex predators knows that you can never ever really tame them, one wrong day and moment and they go out and kick somebodies ass.
So i wait for the day when I read in the news that some tourist or trainer has been killed in Mauritius.