THE ROYAL PSYCHOLOGY

“A lion lives in the heart of every brave man.”

I am a lion girl, a lioness or call me however you want but I am in love with those majestic wild cats. Actually, I am amazed by all kind of cats, small or big, but my heart is sleeping by lions. When I was child, somehow my eyes have been impressed by tigers because of their alluring look and attractive appearance. As I slowly embrace my growth and mature approach, the personality of lions has been more than magical for me. I learn to gravitate towards strength, unity and pride.

Have you ever wondered why so many people like to identify courage with lions ? It’s connected and natural. Everyone who is facing with challenge and goes brave through the obstacles is one with the lion’s heart. The lion is a symbol of moral purity, justice and righteous behavior. It doesn’t surprise that lion has been considered as king, ruler , the one who does right things. Unfortunately, the humans lost the sense for those attributes through the shallow years and fake feelings but lions still have it.

During my adventure in Africa and visiting of lion’s pride , I studied their mutual respect and cohabitation. Yes, it is one pride but inside of that pride, there are also slightly different levels of love, acceptance and dignity. Some are important but the others are more important when not the most important. It is structural but still not so deviant vertical oriented that you can’t locate who is who. The pride is their regime , the way they rule their Savannah full of dreams and hopes. The pride is a lion itself and it turns the African sunsets into the magic of those iconic animals.

How we can describe the pride? The lion is proud and it belongs to pride. The pride is not just the formal group of random lions but the society with the responsible members, both males and females. It could gather from 4 to 40 lions and the core are lionesses: mothers, sisters or daughters. The females are working together for the common goal which is mostly related to hunting and taking care of cubs. Besides those powerful girls, there are also few powerful boys or dominant lions. What they are up to ? Their job is to protect the territory and to ensure the safety for the pride. While the females are taking care of food and they are kind of breadwinners, the males are security guards and main shelters of the big family. It is interesting that dominant males are not staying forever on that position. They are challenged by the newcomers and sometimes they must drift off and enable new regime. It is even better than in human policy. Nevertheless, they remain in coalition against the common enemies and keep the intruders away.

The biggest task of the pride is the nurturing of the babies. The cubs must be taken care of and cherished so they can grow up, being great protectors, hunters and if they are males, they must go, after they are reaching adulthood. This is a sign that they have to find another pride to step in. The problem about that is that if the new lion take over the pride, it might kill all cubs to make place for new one who will have its own genes. The nature is sometime more than cruel but it has own rules that are unquestionable.

I find very interesting how the newcomers integrate themselves into the established lion royal structure. It is not always smooth indeed. Sometimes, there are pretty much rough conflicts between the hunter females and young wandering lionesses that thrive to join the pride. Actually, it is not guaranteed that each integration will be successful, it depends on perception of the ruling class, regarding the enough resources of water and food.

If we observe lions carefully , we might recognize the big similarity with human ties. For one normal Homo sapiens, the family and friendship relations are very important. The same is with those wild cats. They do all together and their unity could be portrayed as the family strength and fight for all, for the future of the society. They are not all connected with blood but their bond is unbreakable once when the pride is founded. The fierce and the loyalty makes the lion’s pride even more attractive in the human eyes since we learnt that even humans break the connections but not the lions.

The importance of keeping the lions safe is not only the wildlife policy key success but the indicator of healthy conservation and the awareness of crucial place of those lovely beasts in the whole heritage of our civilization.