He Bottle-Fed A Lion Cub. Ten Years Later, It Attacked Him And Was Shot Dead

The video is disturbing, and if it is all there was to this story, it would have been bad enough. Recorded by a tourist in a South African safari park last weekend, the footage shows a lion drag a man from a tour truck - his neck in its jaws. The animal drags the man behind a bush while one onlooker sobs hysterically and another pleads for a rifle. The footage ends as the sound of gunshots and screaming cut across the 120-acre Marakele Predator Center. Those images, however, do not explain the sad context of the Saturday attack. The man dragged from the truck was the park's owner, Michael Hodge, who had moved to South Africa with his family because he loved lions so much, local news outlets reported. The 72-year-old had bottle-raised the lion who attacked him and cared for it all his life, a full decade. Hodge now lies in a hospital bed, traumatized, and may never know why Shamba turned on him. The lion Hodge loved was shot dead to save his life. South Africa has in recent years become somewhat notorious for its lion hunts, in which rich tourists can pay thousands of dollars to kill drugged animals that have no chance to flee.

Watch the video here:

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