Cloudy Eye, The Mother

Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Cloudy Eye of the Marsh Pride and her four-month-old daughter. People sometimes question the degree to which our animal brethren feel emotions. Spending long periods of time with the Marsh Pride has reinforced our belief that we should take nothing for granted in our judgement of other beings. Lions so evidently feel pain, anger, fear, joy, a sense of shared identity, loyalty to their pride mates, a sense of place - home - and of great distress and loss when they lose their cubs. Watching the tenderness and care with which Cloudy Eye would lick, groom and nurture her daughter - the only surviving cub of that litter - was particularly emotional for us to observe and is beautifully rendered in this loving image taken by Angie early one morning in Musiara Marsh. The late Barry Lopez in his marvellous book Of Wolves and Men captures the wonder of time spent in the company of wild creatures: “I learned from River that I was a human being and that he was a wolf and that we were different. I valued him as a creature, but he did not have to be what I imagined he was. It is with this freedom from dogma, I think, that the meaning of the words “the celebration of life” becomes clear.

For more information about Jonathan & Angela Scott, check out their Artist Bio.