Gay lions mate
Gay Lions? Not Quite
A photograph of two male lions seemingly in an amorous embrace has some humans clutching their pearls.
After the release of the photograph, taken in August at Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, Ezekiel Mutua, the chief executive of the Kenya Film Classification Board, blamed humans (or maybe demons) for the male-on-male mounting.
"[P]robably, they have been influenced by gays who have gone to the national parks and behaved badly," Mutua told Nairobi News, before suggesting that the lions be isolated and studied because the "demonic spirits inflicting in humans seem to own now caught up with animals."
You may appreciateThe actual story behind the photograph shows that Mutua got some things wrong. The mounting deed isn't actually sexual. And the official jumped the gun on attributing human motivations to animal deed, experts said. ['Gay' Animals: 10 Alternative Lifestyles in the Wild]
"It's rare, it's not really sexual and it tells us a lot more about those officials in Kenya and their homophobia than anything else," Craig Packer, the director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota, told Live Science. "It's a bizarre overreactio
JOHANNESBURG -- A wildlife photographer's candid shot of two male lions in what appears to be an amorous embrace at a reserve in Kenya has the African nation's moral authorities concerned about feasible demonic possession, or humans "behaving badly" and setting the wrong example for the animal kingdom.
"Demons also inhabit animals," Ezekiel Mutua, the chief executive of the Kenya Film Classification Board, told Nairobi News in an interview posted online last week.
The recent photos, taken in a Kenyan wildlife area, undertake show a rare sight: a male lion mounting another male lion in what resembles a sexual act, but experts state may have been a way of showing dominance.
The spectacle of two feral male lions in such intimacy was also observed in Botswana last year and has sometimes been interpreted as homosexual action, though lion experts utter it is a relatively uncommon form of bonding or social interaction.
Paul Goldstein, the photographer who captured the images in Kenya's Maasai Mara reserve in August, said many other species are known to engage in such habit and that, for example, he had seen giraffes doing it.
"It was just a dramatic thing to see," Goldstein said of the
Wildlife photographer spots gay lion couple in Kenya
Two male lions have been spotted canoodling at the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya by a wildlife photographer.
Paul Goldstein—a guide for Exodus Travels—saw the pair nuzzling and mounting each other—in a nature unlike the way male and female lions behave together.
“This, however, was astonishing,” Goldstein tells the Daily Mail.
“When lions mate it normally lasts a few seconds, these two were at it for over a minute and the apparent affection afterwards was very evident, as opposed to the violent withdrawal when male and female mate.
“Even as he dismounted he did not back off as is normal after mating, he crept rotund to the other male's muzzle, for a nuzzle and threw a conspiratorial wink his way.”
The CEO of the Kenya Movie Classification Board–and self-described moral crusader– Dr Ezekiel Mutua has called for the two lions to be separated.
Mutua recently banned the Disney Channel show Andi Mack because of a recent episode where a 13-year-old boy comes out as gay.
Not content with just censor
A photograph of two male lions in an noticeable sexual encounter has caused quite a stir in Kenya—and the head of the country's film censorship board thinks that the animals must have learned their behavior from humans.
"These animals need counseling, because probably they have been influenced by gays who have gone to the national parks and behaved badly," Ezekiel Mutua, the chief executive of the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB), told Nairobi News.
Mutua's comments after pictures taken by U.K.-based photographer Paul Goldstein showed two male lions retreating into a busy area in the Maasai Mara, a game reserve in southwest Kenya. One of the lions laid down and was mounted by the other.
"When lions mate it normally lasts a not many seconds, these two were at it for over a minute and the obvious affection afterwards was very evident, as opposed to the violent withdrawal when male and female mate," Goldstein told MailOnline.
Mutua is known as a moral crusader in Kenya and has banned television shows for purportedly promoting homosexuality and criticized lewd content.
Read more: This route shows where it's illegal to be gay in Africa
The censor said that scientific r
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