Visits to zoos and habitats reveal how magnificent species are faring and the problems they face
By David Hinckley / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Betty White with Oshana the lioness during Nat Geo Wild’s Big Cat Week
No Betty White cougar jokes, please.
It’s going to be hard, though, because White is a featured host in Nat Geo Wild’s annual Big Cat Week, which launches Friday with a dozen specials about the kinds of cats who do not answer to “Here, Kitty, Kitty.”
Nor, it turns out, has White been invited here because there’s an unwritten law that every TV special must include Betty White.
No, she’s an animal lover in general and a big cat lover in particular.
So she visits the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos, for an episode that airs Tuesday at 9 p.m.
She hosts essentially a primer on big cats: how they differ, their natural habitats, how they’re faring in the wild these days.
As with Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, Big Cat Week has a fair amount of sobering news.
In the case of big cats, we see repeatedly how encroachment by man and other species, not to mention the fratricidal tendencies of the cats themselves, make their continued existence increasingly precarious.
“The Game of Lions,” Sunday at 10 p.m., notes that only about 20,000
lions remain, 3,500 of them males. Only one male lion in eight survives
to maturity.
It’s not all a zoology lesson, of course. The opening feature, Friday at 9 p.m., has NFL stars Chris Johnson and Devin Hester run a footrace against a cheetah.
Since cheetahs can hit 70 mph and people don’t reach 30, the producers make a few adjustments to keep it competitive. Like dividing the race into several legs, so the runners have to turn around, which people can do faster than cheetahs.
Perhaps next year the winner can race against Betty White.
source
It’s going to be hard, though, because White is a featured host in Nat Geo Wild’s annual Big Cat Week, which launches Friday with a dozen specials about the kinds of cats who do not answer to “Here, Kitty, Kitty.”
Nor, it turns out, has White been invited here because there’s an unwritten law that every TV special must include Betty White.
No, she’s an animal lover in general and a big cat lover in particular.
Young male lion cubs play in the Masai Mara in Kenya.
She hosts essentially a primer on big cats: how they differ, their natural habitats, how they’re faring in the wild these days.
As with Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, Big Cat Week has a fair amount of sobering news.
In the case of big cats, we see repeatedly how encroachment by man and other species, not to mention the fratricidal tendencies of the cats themselves, make their continued existence increasingly precarious.
An adolescent male lion in Botswana, near a restless buffalo herd that’s agitated by his presence.
It’s not all a zoology lesson, of course. The opening feature, Friday at 9 p.m., has NFL stars Chris Johnson and Devin Hester run a footrace against a cheetah.
Since cheetahs can hit 70 mph and people don’t reach 30, the producers make a few adjustments to keep it competitive. Like dividing the race into several legs, so the runners have to turn around, which people can do faster than cheetahs.
Perhaps next year the winner can race against Betty White.
source
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