A lion on the run was spotted roaming loose in an upscale suburb of Kuwait on Saturday before a passerby was able to lure the big cat into his car and call the police, Reuters reports.
"[The passerby had] sat inside the car with the lion and then it became dangerous so the citizen called police who came and took it from that car to their car," a police source said to Reuters of where the lion had been found streets of Kuwait's Bayan district, south of the capital city.
Photos in the local media showed the lion glaring out of the back of a police car after it had successfully been moved from the passerby's vehicle to the police car. The young adult lion filled the entire backseat, according to authorities, and police are currently seeking the owner of the big cat, presumably someone illegally raising it in the country, where keeping lions as pets has become a status symbol among the wealthy.
Lions are only found in the wild in Sub-Saharan Africa and limited parts of India, and keeping one as a pet can be very dangerous. Lions have been known to attack humans without warning, as though they are beautiful and majestic creatures, are trained from a young age to be ferocious hunters.
The incident in Kuwait's Bayan district raised public concerns about the Gulf Arab's state problem of people keeping illegal lions and other exotic creatures as pets.
"People have to be very cautious when they select the animals they want to keep as pets in their homes," Zuhair Al Nasr Allah, the head of the rescue police, said to the local media, as reported by Gulf News. "These animals must not represent a danger to the family members or the neighbors or common people in public places."
Police raids have been conducted on weekly open-air markets in the area to ensure that the lions are not being traded illegally.
Click here to see a photo of the young adult lion sitting in the back of a passerby's car after it had been caught roaming the streets of a Kuwait suburb.
