It’s easy (sort of) to steal from a lion

It’s really not that hard to steal food from a lion during its meal. Simply:
1) Ask a friend to bite the lion’s tail; and
2) While the lion is chasing him, take the food.
One other thought: Suggest to the friend that he run very, very fast.
“As far as I know, the lions never get wise to it,” said Dan Rees, one of the producers of “The Underdogs” (shown here), which debuts June 15 on the National Geographic Channel and ABC. “It’s a fairly well-documented behavior.”
The hard part was getting it on film. His crew decided to simply focus on mealtime lions and wait. Eventually, one jackal approached from the rear, bit and then (as was wise) ran very fast; the lion chased him and the other jackals exited with the food.
There are many such moments in “Underdogs,” a five-hour series that runs over three Sundays. (There’s more about the show in a longer piece here, under “Stories.”)
Narrated and co-produced by Ryan Reynolds, “Underdogs” celebrates the lowly creatures who might not seem like they can survive in a world of lions and sharks and humans. But they have their schemes. (Shown here are the jackals scheming.)
Some unleash special weapons; others … well, vanish
One sea creature can turn virtually invisible. Another can camouflage as vegetation … but it takes him two weeks to do it. “It’s a great trick,” Rees said, “but kind of a slow one.”
Many of these manage to outscheme larger creatures … including, in one case, humans.
At the grounds of a popular temple in Indonesia, monkeys have a unique trick: They’ll snatch something — a hat or sunglasses, often — from visitors and only return it if someone (the victim or a temple guard) provides a treat.
That’s a clever plan, but some monkeys, Rees said, have thought it out even further: “They thought, ‘Yeah, but what humans really value is,’ as we say in the show, ‘the glass boxes that hold their souls.'”
So they steal phones. They’re rewarded handsomely … and don’t have to worry about perturbing a lion.