JOHANNESBURG — Recent photos taken in a Kenyan wildlife area show a rare sight: a male lion mounting another male lion in what resembles a sexual act but is possibly a way of showing dominance.
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 behaviour and that, for example, he had seen giraffes doing it.
“It was just a dramatic thing to see,” Goldstein said of the male lions. He said he was astonished by a Kenyan media report in which Ezekiel Mutua, a Kenyan official, said the lion behaviour was “not normal” and made remarks critical of homosexuality.
In a statement, Mutua, known as a moral policeman in Kenya, suggested “these animals need counselling because probably they have been influenced by gays who have gone to the national parks and behaved badly. I don’t know, they must have copied it somewhere or it is demonic. Because these animals do not watch movies.”
He added: “The demonic spirits inflicting in humans seems to have now caught up with the animals. That is why I will say isolate the crazy gay animals.