When you go on a safari park trip, you might expect to see some gruesome interspecies action, but no one expects to see the beasts attack each other!
So, when a full crowd at the West Midlands Safari Park watched an entire pride of lionesses ferociously attack the male leader of the pride, visitors were left in a state of shock.
One park visitor, Mya Beverstock, happens to be an amateur photographer who quickly captured the mutiny on her camera.
The 19-year-old Mya was visiting the park located in Bewdley, Worcestershire with her parents on Wednesday, September 5th.
They were driving through the carnivore section of the Safari Park where they could view the African lion and his pride just before noon when the young woman noticed a mutiny in the making.
Mya, of Kenilworth, Warwickshire, said that she first noticed something was up when she saw two male lions growling from atop a rock at something beneath them.
“We had been sat there for a few minutes when we noticed these two male lions sitting on top a rock growling at something down below.”
It wasn’t long before the intrigued visitor discovered the source of the male’s discomfort.
As Mya’s parents continued driving around the scene, she saw a pride of up to nine lionesses gearing up to attack the male leader of the pride.
“We drove around a little bit and I noticed these female lionesses surrounding a male. All of a sudden they just pounced.”
Within moments, the intense gathering of angry lionesses erupted into a state of same-species carnage.
“They were biting at his back legs and his neck and pinning him to the ground, it looked really vicious and you can see in his eyes he thought he was going to die,”
Mya describes the obvious terror in the eyes of the “King of Beasts”.
Within moments of the vicious attack, Safari Park employees were at the scene, ready to break up what was sure to be a fight to the death. Mya recalls the quick action of the Park wardens;
“Within a flash, safari jeeps were there surrounding the lionesses. There were three vehicles, one was honking its horn while another sprayed an extinguisher.”
The loud honking noise, coupled with the freezing cold blow of the fire extinguishers, seemed to be enough to shock the pride of lionesses out of their carnivorous rampage against their leader.
A plethora of speculations arose among guests as to why the pride attacked the male lion.
Suppositions ranged from the pride removing the aged male to replace him with a younger leader, to a negative reaction to the male possibly trying to mate with one of the females.
Although lionesses have been known to attempt to forcefully retire a “king” of the pride if he is getting too old for the job, according to the West Midland Safari Park’s official statement, there is a much more simple explanation…
Meat and natural instincts.
The Park’s statement discloses that Jilani, the male leader of the pride, had an altercation with one of the females over some meat, and his usual back-up wasn’t quick enough to beat the pride to the charged dispute.
“On Wednesday, a dispute happened between Jilani and a female lion over some meat. Jilani and his two brothers usually stick together and are able to keep the lionesses in order, but on this occasion the other females became involved first.”
The statement goes on to explain that Jilani wasn’t left with any serious injuries, and was being given time to recuperate before reintroducing him to the pack.
According to the statement, Jilani and his brothers were only introduced into the pride last year.
One of the Park’s frequenters visited the pride several days after the incident to check on Jilani, and he had already been successfully reintroduced to the pride and was getting on with business as usual.
While the incident was certainly exciting for onlookers, the occurrence is actually quite common in the wild and indicates that the Safari Park has done an outstanding job of providing an environment for the animals to act out their natural instincts. Mya Beverstock seems to agree,
“It was incredible to watch the king of the jungle looking so vulnerable…It’s something you’d be lucky to see in Kenya, yet alone a British safari park…It was quite an experience which really took your breath away. I never expected to see anything like that. You could see the terror in his eyes.”
That being said, the insane footage of the attack below is pretty graphic.
So steel your nerves the way you would while watching a gruesome takedown on the Discovery Channel and view with caution.
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