Should the Bible be changed to the lion and the antelope lie down together? A Dutch photographer has come across an unusual scene: a lion adopts a baby antelope after killing and eating its mother. The sight caught on camera has many wondering if the antelope was really taken in to be eaten later.
Nature photographer Adri De Visser shot a series of touching photos showing a lioness taking in a antelope calf while doing a documentary in Uganda.
The lioness has just finished eating the calf's mother when the young antelope appears. At first, the two just stare at each other but after 45 minutes, the antelope crawls in between the legs of the lioness in apparent search for milk.
When the lioness heard the park ranger's motorcycle nearby, that's when her "maternal instincts" took over, according to the photographer. The lioness picked up the antelope by the scruff, like lionesses do to their cubs, and carried it off.
"So the lioness picked the fawn up by the neck and carried it off like one of its own," Visser told the Daily Mail. "We heard from a group of tourists that the fawn was later spotted alive and well."
In Kenya, there have also been reports about a lioness taking in baby antelopes and protecting them as her own cub. However, the antelopes eventually get eaten by other predators like a lion.
News of the Visser's photo series has been circulated on the internet, with many readers touched by the scenes.
But one lion expert says that these types of stories don't have a happy ending because "the lamb always gets eaten."
"It's quite common for cats to play with their prey and they can look very gentle doing it. But it always ends in tears," Craig Packer, director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota, told the Huffington Post.
The video of the photo series showing the encounter can be watched below:
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