Comments on: Sometimes An African Lion Is Only A Panthera leo

By: curious86

curious86 — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:17:28 +0000

Hasn’t anyone noticed that over time there have been increasing reports of “escaped” lions not only through out North America, but South America as well. What are the odds that all of these are escaped pets or zoo animals. And how many people over the entire Western Hemisphere are gonna continue misidentifying known animals for lions? All I’m saying is, if there isn’t a population existing somewhere, be they prehistoric relics or a group of escapees that have rooted themselves here somehow, then something is going on here. There has got to be a good explanation for all these lion sightings.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:54:57 +0000

Yeah, I was watching my local news at 6pm the other night, and there was the anchorman, nonchalantly reporting the story of an escaped lion chasing cars as though it happened every day. I was flabbergasted at the idea of just driving along the interstate and seeing a full grown lion chasing cars like a big dog. LOL.

It’s not really all that funny though. The lion could have been killed or injured, or worse yet, can you imagine someone on a motorcycle slowing down for a closer look, and being attacked?

Pike County, OH, is in the extreme southeastern part of that state, very near the borders with Kentucky and West Virginia (the border being the Ohio River itself). The laws in Ohio regulating exotic pets are so lax as to be nearly nonexistant. I am not sure what kind of laws West Virginia has. Kentucky recently enacted very tough legislation making private ownership of exotic cats illegal (although those that were already here were grandfathered in, provided their owners met the regulations for their housing and care).

I do not think that this particular lion is the one that generated last month’s West Virginia sightings; this incident happened too far from where those previous sightings occurred. But I’ll bet that there really is (or was) a lion running loose there in West Virginia. Maybe its owner enticed it back home and then kept his or her mouth shut.

I agree, mystery_man, this story illustrates that incredible sightings CAN be true events … and that exotic cats do indeed escape and generate sightings from time to time.

By: red_pill_junkie

red_pill_junkie — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:46:18 +0000

Hey! now I remember. Thanks for the hint Showme!

http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/62031/

By: showme

showme — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:03:54 +0000

It refers to the old cartoon, “Lambert, the Sheepish Lion.”

By: red_pill_junkie

red_pill_junkie — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:30:19 +0000

… A lion, named LAMBert?

Sheeeeesh!

By: Ceroill

Ceroill — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 17:46:12 +0000

Well said, MM.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:18:19 +0000

Well, the story is useful in that it shows that escaped exotics are a perfectly reasonable explanation for some mystery big cat reports. It also says something about witness credibility and shows that people reporting something they witnessed CAN be relied upon to give an accurate description of what they saw. Sometimes when someone says they saw a lion, that is what they actually saw. If they see an orangutan in a tree, that is what they saw. If this “Lambert” fellow was an exotic, then perhaps that is what is causing the West Virginia sightings too and maybe the people seeing it are not misidentifying, of say, a squirrel for a lion.