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  • 2018-07-31 (xsd:date)
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  • Does This Image Show a Peaceful Meeting of a Lion and a Zebra at a Watering Hole? (en)
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  • Lions and zebras generally don't coexist completely peacefully in the wild. Photographs and videos of these animals together in the plains of Africa frequently depict stalking, hunting, chasing, fighting, and, of course, eating behaviors. That's probably why an image purportedly showing a lion and zebra sharing a moment of peace together at a watering hole is frequently shared with comments such as unbelievable but true!: This image has been shared with a variety of captions over the years, such as It's not eating time, Alex and Marty (a reference to the animated zebra-lion friendship in the movie Madagascar), National Geographic: Behind the Scenes, and Morning Sam (a reference to an old cartoon in which Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog put their feud on hold when they clock out of work for the day): This picture however, is not an accurate representation of a lion and a zebra enjoying a moment at a watering hole. This image was digitally created for a 2010 advertisement for Traveler's Insurance. The general conceit of the advertisement was that while animals would normally be skittish at a watering hole (as predators might be nearby), Traveler's insurance company could take the scary out of life so that customers might enjoy the world in peace. Here's the description for the advertisement via Coloribus: The viral image may look genuine when it is viewed on its own, but in the context of the commercial (where it can be glimpsed around the 10-second mark) it's more clear the representation was created with the aid of digital editing: Not only is this image a fabricated one, but the idea that watering holes serve as neutral safe-spaces for thirsty animals doesn't appear to be backed by much evidence. This idea most likely originated with, or at least was popularized by, a passage from Rudyard Kipling's The Second Jungle Book in which he described a water truce during a severe drought: This water truce played a part in Disney's live-action remake of the Jungle Book, released in 2016: Lions sometimes won't attack typical prey animals for various reasons (e.g., they're severely outnumbered; they can't match the speed of the prey without first sneaking up on it), but if a lion is hungry, the concept of a waterhole truce isn't going to stop it. A 2013 study about the predatory habits of a group of lions in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park found that the felines frequently hunted near watering holes, especially when resources were scarce, as such sites are frequented by a variety of prey: (en)
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