Maybe you don’t know that the average male lion weighs about 400 pounds. Maybe you don’t know that a lion’s territory can be as large as 100 square miles. Or maybe you have no idea that when lions walk, their heels don’t touch the ground, or that they’re pretty good swimmers.
No matter if you’re a lion expert or not, you should know one thing: Lions are big and scary and humans should not be messing with them.
In fact, lions are the second biggest big cat species in the world, with tigers the only one bigger than them. That should tell you something!
While lions are technically of the cat species, that doesn’t mean they’re friendly towards humans. One video that recently went viral made that fact apparent when a man tried to give a lion a pat on the head from inside the window of a car.
The video was shot at Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park by a tourist riding in a 4×4 on a safari, who had an up close viewing of some lions.
At first, he’s just innocently filming the lions, who honestly seem like they’re pretty chill. Perhaps that’s why he thought it would be okay to get a little up close and personal with one of them.
Just as the man began to reach his hand out the window to pat the lion, the lion let out a loud, intimidating roarrrr.
If you know anything about lions, you know how load one of their roars can be. In fact, the roar of a lion can be heard from about five miles away!
To put that in perspective, humans can hear each other when shouting about 1,000 feet away. So…that’s pretty loud and terrifying, especially right in front of your face.
Trying to touch a wild animal like a lion is quite daring—and not quite something the man is getting a lot of praise about.
“To try to touch [a lion] is incredibly stupid and ignorant of the tourist that [sic] filmed the sighting,” said Wildlife Sightings, who first published the video.
“Only those who work in the wild know the speed of a lion and it could have torn the arm off the person touching it,” said South African safari ranger, Naas Smit. “It would have the power to pull that tourist straight out of that window and kill them instantly in front of their friends. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do.”
Honestly, the men were just lucky to have gotten away alive, Smit said, noting that the lions could have very easily gotten into their car through the open window and torn them apart.
Chances are that if the lion had killed this person, the lion would’ve likely had to had to be euthanized.
“I just have to shake my head when I see people behaving like this and they deserve all they get,” Smit said.
Check out the shocking video footage below of the lion’s reaction when the man tries to pet him!
What do you think of this clip? Would you ever try to pet a lion?