The Lion King Ramble

Fuck me, another month wooshing on by, and more last minute content.

Alright, so I’ll admit I haven’t brought out my A-Game on this post or the last one, but perfect is the enemy of good, right? Hopefully, this will prove at least a little entertaining to read until I come up with something better.

 So, let’s talk about The Lion King. Given how everyone’s already talked about the obvious monarchist and racist/classist (race-as-classist?) themes that the film espouses (and its godawful remake magnifies), we’ll take those as a given rather than the premise.

“What is the premise?!” I hear you ask. Well, it starts by looking at the film’s world through a purely Watsonian lens.

The more I thought about TLK's obvious exploitation of prey inherent to the monarchy, the more I wondered why the prey animals honored it at all; what do they have to lose by not doing so? They're being hunted and killed on the regular by the lions either way, so fear of that obviously isn't the motivator.

Then, I thought about the hyenas being inexplicably banished to their boneyard ghetto, and I realized: that isn't some weird, random policy they royals implemented as part of their regime. It’s the whole point of the regime.

Essentially, "we'll submit to you in exchange for one less predator to worry about" is the unspoken bargain going on in the Pride Lands.

All this brings the Hyena Problem into a much starker focus; the hyenas being driven out is what gives the royals authority in the first place, and the film portrays them as right. This, in itself, is supremely problematic.

 Okay, so what do I do with this concept? Obviously, both prey and hyena are being exploited here to further the lions’ already flagrant privilege, therefore we should depose the lions and—

And what? Deposing the lion regime would only bring equality among predators. The prey are still fucked. And we can’t fault the predators for this, because they’re carnivores, they’ll die if they don’t kill their fellow animal. So, the lions’ crime isn’t the killing, it’s their anti-competitive practices.

So, in light of all this, what’s there to do about this situation?

Before we dive into what I’m about to posit, take note of how thoroughly unrealistic the film’s world already is. Lions don’t act they way they do in this film.

So, when I say that a whole pride of lions could potentially harvest termite mounds for sustenance, I ask you suspend your disbelief.

Yes, those pesky termites Nuka hated so much are also probably what kept him and the other Outlanders alive for so long. Now, as much as I’m loathe to copy MatPat’s homework (or really have anything to do with him at all), he had a point when he pointed to termites as being an abundant enough source of protein for him to live off of.

Okay, so the math’s been done on Simba requiring about 2 termite mounds’ worth a day, but how does the math hold up against an entire pride? Pretty well, actually. Your average pride amounts to about 12 lions, though sometimes going upwards to 30.[1] Your average lion lives to be about 15 years.

So, time for me to crunch some numbers and pray to Rathazan I don’t fuck up the math.

There are roughly 1.1 million termite mounds in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, but I’ll round that down to a cool million.

A lion eats two mounds’ worth of termites a day.

We add about 30 lions into that mix, just because I wanna stress test this idea.

So these lions are consuming 60 mounds’ worth of termites every day. That’s 21,900 mounds a year.

They do this for about 15 years, the average lifespan of a wild lion.

Over that course of time, they devour 328,500 mounds’ worth of termites.

That leaves 671,500 mounds left.

Now, we’re left with this question: how sustainable is this way of life for Simba’s descendants?

Perhaps. I don’t know how fast the termites would repopulate. But even if it were, lions are far from the only predators in the savannah, so the point is rendered moot. Unfortunately, it looks like there’s still going to have to be some prey dying. Still, if the Pride Rock lions are willing to agree to this arrangement, that leaves a significantly reduced amount of prey death.

If they are willing.

… Which, let’s be real, is very unlikely outside of a prey revolution of some kind. Who the hell wants to eat nothing but insects for the rest of their lives?

And how likely is that revolution, am I right? It’s not like there’s ever been significant enough a concentration of a particular prey animal to cause significant predator death. And it’s not like any significant lions in this hierarchy have died to such an event, and made generations of kids bawl at the aftermath.

So, it looks like the bug plan is a no-go, right? On its own, certainly. It looks like the Prey Revolution would have to involve the extinction of the predator species after all. Or would it?

What if the bug plan were supplemented with the occasional prey animal that’s gotten old and weak, and needs to be put out of its misery? Or prey animals that have died of some other natural cause? Or perhaps prey animals that have been exiled and thus made fair game?

That might seem a little more reasonable to the predators, especially when negotiated at the point of a thousand wildebeest horns.

And the thing is? We are talking about a universe of sapient animals. Sooner or later, they’ll figure out this “agriculture” thing, and how to apply it to the farming of both plants and insects. It won’t be instant, by any means, and it sure as hell won’t be within living memory of Simba’s reign, but it’s a distant possibility.

And with the adoption of agriculture would come more stable food sources, and with that would come less incentive to hunt prey animals, and with that would come proper civilization.

Does all this add up? I’m not sure. Like I said, I didn’t bring my A-Game here, pretty much all this is just stream-of-thought. It should make for some bangin’ fanfiction, though.

Within this framework, we can accept TLK’s problematic elements as a glamorized version of a primitive point in this setting’s history. Which, you know, is exactly the kind of thing Disney is famous for.

And if you’re wondering, yes, there’s already a romanticized cartoon or two about a human and his dragon lover singlehandedly bringing together the whole world to stop Yahweh from destroying everything.

[1] Schaller, G. B. (1972). The Serengeti lion: A study of predator–prey relations. Pg. 34-35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-73639-6.
[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/8/140731-termites-mounds-insects-entomology-science/