Important Safety Tip

Which is, don't hang out near the lions' watering hole this coming August 14th.

According to this research, you are more likely to be eaten by a lion before the moon is out the day after a full moon. The next full moon is August 13. So from sunset until moonrise on August 14th, you and I are prime cuts at Simba's deli counter.

The reason is the combination of leonine hunger and darkness, both of which are greater after sunset before the not-quite-full-anymore moon rises. As the moon waxes, the nights have more brightly lit hours in which even clumsy poor-scent-organ having human beings will notice a quarter ton of feline death hanging out with that certain gleam in its eye. Thus, lions have more trouble catching prey, especially since most of their prey are critters that run fast, jump high or can do both. Trouble catching prey means hungry lions.

After the full moon, the hours before moonrise are not at all well-lit, meaning Leo and Leona can get within paw-whapping, jaw-snapping distance of a whole lot of things that might otherwise spot them coming.

Of course, the danger is relatively light in any case. Researchers studied nearly 500 lion attacks in Tanzania that happened in the 21 years between 1988 and 2009. That works out to just over 250 full moons, meaning there were slightly less than two attacks per full moon in a country of about 40 million people. That puts your risk of being attacked by a lion during a full moon at about .00000005 percent, which falls even more if you do not happen to be in Tanzania.

Unless, of course, that's what the lions want us to think.