lions-in-photo-albums

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When wearing fur just isn't quite enough

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Berlin Zoo, 1957

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Tippy Hendron (who starred in The Birds), was an exotic animal collector from way back. Here, her daughter Melanie Griffith poses with a lion cub.

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Just hanging out!

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Too big for the bathtub? Try the garden hose

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While visions of sugar plums danced in his head!

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Peek-a-boo, I see you!

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He was expecting the morning paper...

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James Cagney with a cub reporter, 1951.

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So many questions. This one is titled, “Suicide in German zoo,1954; three lions around naked body of a man (photographer: Eckhard Mandalsloh).” Why naked? Did he die by falling into the cage? Did he kill himself by other means once inside? Or did the lions actually kill him? Do people commit suicide by lion?

Turns out, they do. In 1995, a woman entered the lions’ den at Washington’s National Zoo to be mauled to death by lions. In 2016, in circumstances similar to those pictured here, a man stripped naked and jumped into the lion exhibit in the Santiago Zoo in Chile. He survived, but two lions were shot dead in order to rescue him. It’s a strange, strange world.

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I now pronounce you predator and prey. You may lick the bride.

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BACKSEAT DRIVER

2 Jan 1963, Birmingham: “NEEDED: New Home--If you would like to own a female lion cub, there was one for sale by Bob Henderson, 20, of Birminghamd, Ala. He advertised to sell the cub in the local newspaper. Henderson said the cub was a gift from friends and he was selling her, ‘because I just don’t have time to play with her anymore.”  Bob was in a surprisingly common predicament, due to the prevalence of lion cubs sold as pets in early 20th-Century America. Zoos had all the lions they could use (and were sometimes the reason that surplus cubs ended up as pets in people’s households and backyards). But buyer regret almost always set in, not due to the lack of time Bob claims, but due to the enormous expense of feeding a full grown carnivore and the risk associated with keeping wild predators as pets. No report on what became of this cub.

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These two cubs arrived in 1929 at the Washington Zoo, a present from South Africa to President Calvin Coolidge. Although the cubs posed for this photo on arrival in America, the photo is oddly captioned “These small lion cubs seem perfectly content with the new African pal.” Their “pal’s” expression doesn’t seem to convey the same contentment; perhaps he doesn’t appreciate being compelled to pose for a novelty photo only because he’s African-AMERICAN.

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Some people were into disco in the 1970s. Some people had, ahem, other interests.

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Hollywood actresses gonna accessorize, even in Mexico. (No, accessory lions aren’t native there either).

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Earlier examples of body piercing weren’t always intentional.

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It would be an exaggeration to say that Gay’s Lion Farm was solely responsible for the backyard lion phenomenon of the early 20th Century, but not by much. They bred so many surplus lion cubs that they sold the extras off to anyone with the means to buy one, no questions asked.