A Leopard is Not Defined by Her Spots

While breaking for lunch, I decided to see if there was anything worth watching on the tube. Surfing the channels in aimless avoidance of commercials, (I expect usually to find nothing), and by then my meal is finished. This time was different though. I happened across an oddly unique nature documentary that featured a lioness mothering an infant deer of some sort. It seems the lioness had lost her pride to catastrophic circumstance, and as sole survivor had undergone some degree of post traumatic stress, which it was believed contributed to her adopting the baby deer.

For days, and then weeks, researchers followed them. As time wore on, the lioness grew thinner, and the film crew was certain she would soon eat the baby deer. She did not. In fact, she did not feed herself for nearly a month, and it was only after the baby deer had died that she showed any interest in tending to her own needs. According to the researchers, over the course of the next year, she adopted five more deer.

What fascinates me is that this type of behavior on the part of the lion flies in the face of conventional wisdom. "Animals" are dumb, right? They don't experience love, and they certainly don't understand the concept of putting other individuals first. I mean, come on, they're "animals." Incapable of generating any thoughts beyond the primal... right?