I have studied the ways of nature's creatures my whole life. I don't
want to get into the whole debate about evil but just to correct a
factual error. A lion's instincts, like any other creature's instincts
drive it not just to produce children, but to produce grandchildren and
great grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, and so on. I am not
aware of any case of a lion killing its own offspring, and if this does
occur I would imagine it would be because the offspring is too weak to
be likely to produce any grandchildren for its parent. A male cub is not
useless if the father is doing all the mating in that pride. It is
driven out to find its own pack and produce more descendants for its
parents. When it DOES succeed in stealing a pride from a rival male,
then it WILL kill the rival male's cubs since they will compete with its
own cubs for food and the care and attention of the females. This
happens often, in fact every time a male/group of males takes over a
pride and is probably what previous posters were actually thinking of
mistakenly


Also, although one lion may get most of the matings in a particular
pride, there may be 3 or 4 adult males, some of which will never get any
matings at all. These males will all be brothers, and their function is
to protect the pride from being taken over by another male/group of
brothers. These non-mating males are in fact helping their parents to
produce more grandchildren, and, in a way, still continuing their own
bloodline since the cubs will still be very closely related to them.

I hope that I have kindled someone's interest in the ways of nature,
which always reveals fascinating secrets the more you look into it. If
so, my gold has been well spent!

Penned by my hand on the 18th of Ero, in the year 354 AF.