Dethroned in an epic battle, he forms an alliance with a former rival. There he meets Stumpy Tail, who, despite her name, has the dignity of the Queen of the Animal Kingdom Dynamite, a venerable coalition leader who, muscled out by younger males, sets off on an incredible thirty-seven-day, 137-mile journey to find a new home and Kataza, who escapes another lion's claws, and whom Loveridge twice saves from death at the hands of humans. After earning his doctorate at Oxford, he seized an invitation to study the lions of Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Loveridge learned to love predators at the knee of his father, an eminent herpetologist who stored baby crocodiles in the family bathtub. In the tradition of Born Free and Gorillas in the Mist, Lion Hearted chronicles Loveridge's long acquaintance with a host of charismatic lions that his team has tracked, often from birth to death. In Lion Hearted, Loveridge pieces together, for the first time, the fascinating life and murky details of this beloved lion's slaying. Andrew Loveridge, the zoologist who had studied Cecil for eight years. But Cecil's death sparked unprecedented global outrage, igniting thousands of media reports about the peculiar circumstances surrounding this hunt.

The lion was one of dozens slain each year in Zimbabwe, which legally licenses the hunting of big cats. In 2015, an American hunter named Walter Palmer shot and killed a lion named Cecil. ' Until the lion has its own storyteller, tales of the lion hunt will always glorify the hunter.' Zimbabwean proverb

Lion Hearted by Andrew Loveridge