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Journalism of Courage
An amateur photographer captured the unusual sight of a male baboon grooming a lion cub, and a video of the incident has people on social media comparing it with a scene from the film The Lion King.
Kurt Schultz, who captured the video in the Kruger national park in South Africa, said that he initially thought it must be a female baboon, but it turned out to be a young male.
Despite the fact that the baboons normally hunt lion cubs, Schultz said that the cub was alive and didn’t seem to have any obvious injuries.
Speaking about the area where the video was recorded, Schultz said that lions and leopards usually hid their cubs there when they went hunting.
“I spent about 1 hour at the sighting and decided to leave as I had a meeting at 9 am. It is normal for a troop of baboons to kill young leopard and even lion, however after 20 years of guiding this is the first time I have seen a baboon nurturing and caring for a young predator cub,” Schultz said.
On social media, some people compared it to The Lion King’s Simba and baboon Rafiki, while others said the lion cub must have met with a tragic end.
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“I don’t see a chance of this poor cub surviving. The troop of baboons was large and a lion would not be able to get the young back,” Schultz told AP. A report by LatestSightings later confirmed that the cub didn’t survive.
