15/07/2025
Please stay away from animal entertainment.
Petting Lion Cubs Is Not Conservation. It’s Cruelty. 🦁 💔
A new article disturbingly calls lion cub tourism “educational” - despite overwhelming evidence of animal suffering. Based on surveys from zoo visitors at just three South African facilities, it dangerously downplays the truth: the lion tourism industry is built on exploitation.
In tourist videos:
❌ 77% of cubs show distress through pawing, flinching or trying to flee.
❌ 98% are exposed during the day even though lions are nocturnal.
❌ Cubs are torn from their mothers within days of birth and forced into unnatural human interaction.
Once they're too big to cuddle? Many are sold for canned hunting, the lion bone trade, or to illegal markets.
Facilities often use misleading words like “rescue” or “conservation” that mask systemic exploitation. However, if you can pet it, pose with it, or walk with it: it's not protected. It's being abused.
Over 8,000 lions and countless tigers are held in 300+ breeding facilities in South Africa alone.
Let’s be clear: none of these animals will ever be released into the wild.
To protect big cats, we must end captive breeding and commercial trade - for good. 📢
📸 © FOUR PAWS | Aaron Gekoski
