Baboon Carrying a Lion Cub Looks Like The Lion King in Real Life (+8 Pics)

If there’s one thing you probably remember from The Lion King, it’s the scene in which Rafiki the baboon presents a young Simba atop Pride Rock to the animals waiting below. And in an instance in which life imitates art, photos have emerged of a male baboon holding a lion cub just as Rafiki did.

Kurt Schultz, the director of Kruger National Park in South Africa, was the photographer who captured this unexpected sight. In a series of candid shots, Schultz witnessed the baboon break away from its troop and carry the cub (with its hands and mouth) high in a tree.

Once there with the youngster in tow, the baboon proceeded to groom the cub. “Male baboons do a lot of grooming,” he tells My Modern Met, “but the care given to this lion cub was the same care given by a female baboon to one of her own young.”

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