This Lion Wrestling Video May or May Not Give You Crippling Anxiety
By now you may be familiar with the phenomenon of The Lion Guy. The videos of him wrastlin' with the 400-pound beasts abound on YouTube, each one offering a weird combination of amazement and crippling anxiety. After all, things haven't ended well for other amigos of dangerous animals, like "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell. But while we all know that bears are godless, marauding killing machines, it seems lions are marauding killing machines whose piety is up for debate.
The Lion Guy is Kevin Richardson, a South African animal behaviorist who has managed to insert himself into a pride of lions (duh). He works at a sanctuary that's home to 32 rescued big cats, and he has developed intimate relationships with many of them. That allows him to get up close and personal, snuggling and play-fighting with them to prove he belongs in the pack. At one point, he even participates in "grooming exercises." But as inspiring as it all might be, the overarching feeling is that he's living his life on a knife edge.
Here he is in (very well-produced) action in 2013:
