Aww, who’s a fewocious beast?! To keep their lions enriched, zookeepers at the Oregon Zoo have constructed “cat toys” which they dangle for the zoo’s six lions from the top of the predator’s exhibit. In the above video, Beth Foster, the lead keeper of the predator area, says that one of her biggest challenges is finding toys for the lions that are durable, so the team created giant ropes out of butcher paper that they’ve dubbed “the leaping lion toy.”
The toy works similarly to a kitty wand, in that the lions jump up to try to grab the rope, letting them bring out their predatory instincts. “They love it. They are really inquisitive, and have those instincts to pounce,” Foster says. Once the lions are able to grab a bit of the rope, the game turns to shredding it to pieces, very much like my cat recently did with an insurance reimbursement check I left sitting around.
It just goes to show, once again, that wild big cats are really not all that much different than the average house cat. And yes, that means that your cat would probably also end you if it grew to the size of a Great Dane.
(Via Tastefully Offensive)
