28 July 2021
Scarface the lion was known to just about everyone. The scar across his eye turned him into an icon, but the king of the savannah has now passed away at 14 years old.
Sad news reaches us from the animal kingdom: Scarface, the lion famous around the globe, is no longer with us. Back in 2012, when he was 4 years old, a Maasai warrior struck him with a spear after he strayed onto the warrior's land. That wound left him with a scar above his right eye. From then on the big cat went by the nickname Scar, or Scarface, and that name turned him into the best-known lion on earth (a nod to The Lion King’s Scar). He led his pride in Kenya's Maasai Mara game reserve for many years. That reign lasted until 1pm on June 11th 2021, the moment he breathed his last.
Conservationists report that he died of natural causes. Over the past few years he had grown thinner and more and more frail. In a sense Scar was fortunate: in the wild, lions rarely live beyond 8 to 15 years.
The Mara Predator Conservation Organization confirms that Scar passed away peacefully.
”He died in peace without the distraction of vehicles or hyenas. We were the only ones in the field by his side, trying to support him…”
Today Kenya, and indeed the whole world, is in mourning. He was enormously admired and had become a true symbol. Scarface even appeared on screen (in documentaries, that is). Plenty of people will recognise him from the BBC series “Big Cat Diary”, and he even had a Facebook page of his own. Not many lions can claim that.
He may have left us, but our memories of him will stay with us for good.
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