The Lion Habitat: Lions, and giraffes, and ostriches, oh my! You’ll enjoy your time here, I promise.
The Lion Habitat could only exist in Las Vegas.
When the MGM Grand decided renovate and put in, I don’t know, a million more square feet of Hakkasan, something had to go.
And that was that.
The four-legged, once-great Las Vegas Strip entertainers that iconified the MGM Grand and MGM Studios for decades were left in the dust – literally; the Lion Habitat off St. Rose Parkway is a retirement-home-in-the-desert for the hairy, 500-pound kings of the green felt jungle. From the ashes of the Lion Exhibit rose the Lion Habitat.
In truth, these lions lived here anyway. They worked at MGM’s lion exhibit in 6-hour shifts, commuting back and forth to work like so many human workers. I hope they got holidays off and decent health care. An all-meat diet can be trying on the heart.
They’ve been here forever. You know the lion that roars at the beginning on MGM movies? His grandchildren still live here at the Lion Habitat.
So when the plug was pulled at MGM, this became their full-time job, and their private home became a non-profit, accepting visitors daily for $25.
We watched a lion cub feeding. The cubs get fed by hand, to teach them manners. That in and of itself is pretty cool.
A fully-grown male lion eats up to 15 pounds of meat a day. The Lion Habitat spends over $20,000 a month in food.
For some reason, The Lion Habitat also has some ostriches and a giraffe named Ozzie. (Sorry ostriches, I didn’t catch your names.)
Ostriches are hilarious. They’re nature’s example of when you take a joke a little too far. Evolution got to the end of the branch on that one, and was like, “I guess we’re done here.” Next branch! I mean, where do you go from Ostrich?
Ozzie is even better. He’s not just cute – he’s talented! They taught Ozzie how to paint. Artistically, of course. He would make a terrible house painter. He does mostly abstract expressionism, but I think he’d be more into impressionism if he had an opposable thumb.
The Lion Habitat also lets visitors feed Ozzie some romaine lettuce. He eats like 35 pounds of hay a day, so romaine is just a snack. He was super friendly and probably my new best friend.
Freedom
Parts of the visit to the Lion Habitat were so sad. It was a particularly hot day, which didn’t help. But to see all those lions – dozens of them – laying around, chin on paws, looking all spirit-broken. Okay, maybe I’m projecting a little.
Disclaimer: A trainer reassured us that lions basically lay around all day in the wild anyway. Besides, here at the Lion Habitat, they get all the food they want, whenever they want it. What a life, right? Also, the owner of the Lion Habitat lives right next door, always has, and based on her pictures on their website, she really loves these cats.
Even with all that being the case, there’s something about animals in captivity that doesn’t feel right. Their figurative ‘fin’ always seems down.
These animals were at the top of their food chain in their natural habitat. And at the top of the food chain, they had the most freedom. Or at least until the humans came along and mucked everything up.
