Lion Warns Pride That Kills Need To Be Much More Brutal If They Want Any Attention From NatGeo Channel

KENYA, AFRICA—Expressing his disgust at his family’s inability to catch the attention of the acclaimed TV network’s crew, a local lion has warned his family members to substantially increase the brutality of their killings or risk losing the chance of getting featured on the NatGeo channel.

“Y'all need to dial up your savagery meters to as high as you can if you want your story to be told on the 10 PM primetime slot five weeks from now,” said the patriarch, Mkubwa. “We can’t let those fucking tigers take away our screen time."

Mkubwa was adamant that no amount of rolling around, scratching, sleeping, or awkwardly trying to penetrate a female in heat would divert the focus of the NatGeo crew onto them.

“Sure, we need to be beautiful and majestic or whatever. But most importantly: we need to be bloody. This is not who we are,” he said, pointing to the relative tameness of footage showing three cubs adorably stumbling over a dead zebra before eating it. “We’ll take Animal Planet if we have to but we don’t want to be relegated to some weird morning timeslot. Only National Geographic will be able to give us the free narrative space required to truly show our culture. I’m talking: shots of us roaming around drenched in moose blood, hours of footage of us just tearing the flesh off of a live deer, and a sick promotional still of two of us fighting over an elephant trunk. This is the big leagues, guys! Get it together. I'm tired of being called Aslan.”

Mkubwa also told them that every lion and lioness must try to catch prey by jumping off trees and submitting them with their jiu-jitsu skills before killing them so that the cinematographer can get the most aesthetically pleasing shots.

“Ganging up on small animals is just B-roll nowadays,” he instructed, as they reviewed tape and drew diagrams. "They want the slow motion, night vision, elongated-body-type stuff—Oh shit! Is that Attenborough's crew? Places, everyone. Let's give the people what they want!"