Lion cub adamantly seeks attention from his sleepy father

Baby animals will always have a soft spot in most people’s hearts. Seeing baby animals in the African wild is always a special occasion. It was during a safari in the Kruger National Park that this adorable moment between a lion cub and his father was captured. It was like watching a possible real-life scene from the Lion King movie with Simba jumping on top of Mufasa, looking for attention.

We recently had incredible luck on our side during a safari when we came across a large pride of lions resting in the shade. Lions are big sleepers and they can easily spend twenty hours of the day just sleeping, resting and doing absolutely nothing. Part of the pride were three adorable cubs, clearly not looking to go to rest any time soon. While the adults were sleeping, the cute lion cubs had other plans of their own. I remembered as a child the trouble I got into for making a noise while my parents were trying to take their afternoon nap. One male lion cub, who clearly had all the courage in the world or couldn’t care less, decided it was time to go and seek some attention from his father, a big male lion sleeping a short distance away from the rest of the pride.

The lion cub carefully approached the King of the Jungle, making us wonder how this whole ordeal was going to turn out. What happened next totally amazed us. The lion cub unexpectedly decided to climb on top of his father, curiously investigating his impressive mane. Still there was not a single response coming from the big male lion. The lion cub sat on top his father, looking very comfortable, thinking of what else he can do to get his father’s attention. The cub decided to get down from his father and thought that cuddling with his father would do the trick. Even after placing his paw on his father’s face, licking him a few times again after, the lion cub realized that he was not going to receive any sort of attention. The cub turned around and started planning his next move while checking to see what was happening with the rest of the pride members. At that very moment the big lazy male lion slowly turned onto his back and continued snoozing with his feet up in the air, acting as if nothing happened. The cub was already so fixated on his new mission that he totally ignored his father and went back to play with the other two cubs.

Even though the male lion did not show any sort of response while his son looked for attention, we were amazed by the unconditional patience and acceptance the male lion showed towards his son. With a paw the size of the cub’s head, the father could easily have sent his son flying in annoyance which has happened before. In our opinion this was a sign of true fatherly love as we all knew the big male lion wasn’t really fast asleep all that time and he was well aware of what was going on the whole time.