A Michael Broad Blog
NEWS AND OPINION: My research tells me that in 2019 (or perhaps 2020), an amendment was made to South African’s Animal Improvement Act (AIA) to reclassify lions as farm animals. The government amended the AIA to include lions as a “species” that can be bred as livestock. There was no public consultation. The amendment …
The captive lion industry in South Africa (SA) includes: The captive lion industry of SA is highly exploitative and an abuse of lions which treats them worse than livestock. The only lions in SA should be protected in lion reserves/parks, which is the long-term goal. A complete transition then? A 246-page report has been …
NEWS AND COMMENT: This story comes from South Africa. I have started that way because South Africa has a bad reputation for abusing lions. They offer canned lion hunts to rich Europeans and Americans. They breed lions for these hunts. They abuse lions in the interests of financial profit. It’s a bad relationship with …
In this video we initially see a lioness copulating with a male lion. And then along comes the male lion’s dominant brother. We can see this because the dominant male attacks his subservient brother who behaves in a submissive way by rolling on his back. In the meantime, the female who is in heat …
This picture of a lion cub’s spotted and striped coat in contrast to their father’s plain coat caught my eye as a good example of nature protecting the vulnerable lion cub by improving their camouflage which is customised for the environment in which they live. The spots and stripes disappear after around nine months. …
A new study: Increasing ambient temperatures trigger shifts in activity patterns and temporal partitioning in a large carnivore guild, has concluded that the cheetah becomes more active at night i.e. tends to become nocturnal with high ambient temperatures and they also decrease their activity levels. The cheetah is a large wild cat species which …
NEWS AND OPINION: This will be a very good cat new story for millions of people, and many of us, I suspect, want a good new story at the moment because I can see the world drifting into World War 3 unless we are very careful and we are not being careful. In this …
I’ve always thought this but now a study confirms it. The typical wildlife, including large animals such as zebra and impala, that drink at waterholes in Africa are more likely to flee when they hear the faintest human conversation than when they hear the sounds of the most dreaded predators in Africa. Clearly, these …
