The British Daily Mail has a heart warming series of pictures of adult lions, male and female, nuzzling their cubs. Take a look at them. What you are seeing is real, and it is uplifting. Love, as we know it, is a product of biology, and it is a good thing to know that the best in us is supported by nature, along with all the stuff that shocks us on reality TV. But we are setting ourselves up for a fall if we mistake this for the whole story.
The lion king looking with approval at the cut cub is looking at one of his own offspring. In the wild, when a young lion replaces the monarch of a pride, he is not so gentle with his step-children. He kills them and, in most cases, I gather, eats them. This is predictably traumatic not only for the cubs but for the lionesses. They mope about for days crying and looking for their babies. But then of course they dry up and go back into their estrous cycle. All the sooner to give birth to the new monarch's cubs.
This view of nature is not so pretty. A few years ago an article appeared that claimed that this was a myth. The author hadn't actually studied lions in the wild, and was picking apart published research. About that time I happened to meet someone who had studied lions in the wild, and she had personally observed the events I describe above time and time again. Lions are what lions are.
Human beings are, thankfully, not lions. But we are biological creatures and our biology supports both a lot of beautiful stuff and a lot of ugly stuff. Sorry if this upsets some readers. We report. You decide.
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