You are in a petting zoo.

You run your fingers through the fur of an adorably cute lion cub and wonder where this wild animal will be when it replaces its playful grabs with agonizing grips as it transforms into a big cat. Little do you know that the “wild” cub is a product of factory farming, where it is unnaturally taken from its mother after birth and placed in a zoo only to be taken out again—but this time, not to be petted. Rather, it will be helplessly slaughtered by trophy-hunters through a fast growing business known as “canned hunting.”

Canned hunting is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when wealthy foreign hunters have their targets “canned” into a fenced area—rather like “shooting fish in a barrel.” It’s causing a major decline in the population of Africa’s biggest cats over the past 50 years and it all starts with a lion cub, who is the victim of an unnatural life.

A lioness is forced to breed and produce 3 litters per year, an act that is exceptionally unnatural and causes extreme stress for the cub AND the mother.

Then, these “in-bred,” “human-imprinted,” and “psychologically damaged” cubs are put in a petting zoo, where tourists pay to pet them and unknowingly support their sad, sad future: canned hunting.

When the cubs grow and are no longer fitted to be in a zoo, they are sent back to the breeder for a short period of time in a miserable, dirty little camp. Here, they will be waiting for their painful death.

Finally, they are sold to hunters and helplessly hunted down in a fenced area. Where there are no rules. Where hunters are given the right to torture and destroy for fun. Where these lions, the product of nature’s beauty, turned into tamed animals, are shot multiple times with bullets or arrows and die never experiencing the life they should be experiencing, a wild life. As they finally walk onto a normal wildlife threshold, relieved to “escape” their cruel past, they are killed and never have the opportunity to experience the freedom that should have been granted to them.

And for what reason does this sick industry exist? For MONEY.

And it doesn’t end there. Their bones would then be sold to markets for medical purposes; even though it is proven that there is no medical value in them.

In other words, the lion is stripped of it’s dignity and belittled to nothing more than a tiny speck in a fast-growing industry.

We humans fear abduction. We fear kidnapping and the associated feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, not having the power to manipulate the situation because that is something we are so used to being able to do. But has it ever occurred, to anyone, that canned hunting fits the criteria of being a form of kidnap? And for some reason, I have the sick feeling that even if canned hunting IS recognized as a form of abduction, it’s not a big deal because it’s not us being hunted. It’s not us forced to starve in a cage. It’s not us who are being held hostage by people who speak a foreign language and are stronger and the more dominant species—putting us in a helpless position. It’s not us who are hunted down, even though sometimes I wonder if we should be—NEED to be so we could right our wrongs and see that WE are the animals.

I never thought that it was possible for the human race to be this greedy, to not even sympathize for these victims—these lions with hearts that beat the same way ours do, with bodies that suffer from and experience pain the same way ours do, with feelings that are hurt the same way ours are hurt, and with ambitions just like us.

Maybe it’s because no one is aware, or maybe it’s just because no one cares. It makes me wonder if WE are the ones with the antagonizing grip, the ones that need to be tamed, the ones who should be trapped in a fence and shot by bullets or arrows. Not the lions.