'Her daughters literally weaponized her blindness': 17 years old and blind, Josie became the one of the oldest recorded lionesses because her daughters refused to leave her behind

In the animal kingdom, only the strongest survive. But strength isn't always defined by the physical.

The laws of the jungle show mercy for no one. The same with the savannah. You spend your whole life surviving until you can't anymore. It leaves little room for weakness, illness, or disability. If you can't hunt your own meals, then you are considered a burden. Most times, hunting comes down to strength, accuracy, and skill - all things you lose once becoming blind.

Josie, a 17-year-old lioness in Addo Elephant National Park, was nearly blind for the last five years of her life. By all accounts, she should have been left behind years ago, but her daughters refused to abandon her. They hunted for her, and even developed a unique way of using her blindness to their advantage.

Strength isn't always about how fast you can run or the strength of your bite. It can also be about the strength of your character and your impurrtance to your family.

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via @creepydotorg

Josie, the lioness
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via @anishmoonka
If you didn't know this already, when you start to lose one of your senses, your other senses begin to heighten. Now, because Josie was already way older than most lionesses normally live to, it's pawssible that the increase in sensitivity was not so great. However, Josie looked like she could still hold her own, hunting small prey with heightened hearing and smell, while remaining the purrfectly tactical decoy for her daughters. She could also distract the prey by using “strange” movements that would seem unnatural for a normal-seeing lioness.
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Josie, the lioness
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via @anishmoonka
It's not just hoomans that look after their sick and injured. Although self-preservation usually comes first, some primates care for sick or injured members of their pack, as do elephants and dolphins. But, as a whole, there's a reason why we have the phrase “it's a dog-eat-dog world out there”. The animal kingdom is not the kindest place.
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Josie, the lioness, and her daughters, Dawn, and Duffy
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via @billainsahu
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via @ali_of_asworld
Since we can't read their minds, we can't be 100% sure of anything. Any guess we have is speculation, but what is clear is that they felt she was impurrtant enough to stay with, despite being blind. Whether it was from a biological standpoint or a tactical one, it doesn't matter. They stayed by their mother, and we think that's purrfectly beautiful.
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