File:Xlions attack 5000.jpg

English: I am not an expert in animal behavior and therefore I do not know if what happened in the Etosha National Park occurs normally and if my interpretation is correct but in any case what I saw particularly surprised me. On November 3, 2015, I stopped to observe the animals that had gathered around an artificial pool. Two lions, a male and a female guarded the water while wildebeests, zebras, oryxes, ostriches and antelopes - apparently arranged according to a priority dictated by strength and defense capacity - awaited the "authorization" of the felines to approach and drink. After some time a female giraffe arrived. Unlike the other animals, the giraffe has evidently begun to "provoke" the lions, walking in front of them and not "respecting" either distances or access to water. After some signs of impatience, the lioness who was guarding the pool of water launched a first attack regardless of the possibility that the giraffe could somehow defend itself. The attack ended after a few seconds and the lions returned to garrison the water again. But contrary to what I thought, the giraffe did not lay down its arms and did not accept that it was the lions that set the priorities or that it was they who had to give the concession to water. After a short time she is back, again in a "provocative" way at a very short distance from the lions. And again, after a while, the lioness again launched a second attack but failed also the second time. What before my eyes therefore seems to have taken place was a "rebellion", an attempt to bring "democracy" back into a sacred place which is precisely the resource of water. Thinking back to those moments I think I have not witnessed "only" a "struggle for the territory", to something belonging exclusively to the animal world but to have also witnessed the metaphor of the history of man and the eternal struggle between sharing resources and repression for the hoarding of wealth. Unfortunately, history, just like the history of man, does not have a happy ending. In the afternoon, after leaving that area and then returning, I found that same giraffe killed (I did not intentionally insert the photograph in the sequence which, however, together with a larger number of photos describing that attack, can be found in the gallery. of images from my wiki commons account) nb The sequence of photos taken is larger and can be viewed in full in the image gallery on my Wikipedia and Flickr account English: The lioness launches an attack on the giraffe that had approached the water without her permission