Christian the Lion: He Remembers Kindness (Reunion Video)

A wonderful video about love — and about how animals remember kindness.

The story took place in London in the late 1960s, and millions of people have watched the video of the reunion with Christian the lion.

The story of Christian the lion

Two Australians living in London, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, bought a lion cub at the famous Harrods department store in 1969 (it sold exotic animals back then). They named him Christian. The cub lived at the furniture shop where they worked, with quarters set aside for him in the basement.

But lions grow fast, and Christian had to be prepared for life in the wild. The friends took him to Kenya, where the well-known conservationist George Adamson helped them.

The reunion

The most touching part is the reunion a year after Christian was released into the wild. Skeptics insisted the lion wouldn’t recognize his former owners. But Christian, against all predictions, hadn’t forgotten them: when he saw Anthony and John, he ran to them and hugged them with his paws in incredible joy.

The footage of that reunion became a symbol of the best kind of relationship between people and animals.

P.S. A very touching video.