Back in the day, lions had it made. They roamed freely across the Mediterranean, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa. They were the top of the food chain, the King of Beasts. They were in the Bible.
You could say it's been relatively downhill since then.
There are two kinds of lions, African lions and Asiatic lions. In 1975 there was an estimated 250,000 lions in Africa. Today there are only about 30,000. Meanwhile, the Asiatic lion population stands at just 411.
As many as 600 lions are killed every year by trophy hunters in Africa. Which hits especially hard when one of those hunters is a perky blonde cheerleader from Texas.
And that's to say nothing about threats to lions posed by poaching, disease and habitat loss. It's extremely sad. Enough to make you want to stay in bed all day.
Enough to make you a real grouch.
Enough to make it so you just can't even hear one more PSA.
In honor of today being World Lion Day, here's a list of the King of Beasts' biggest beef:
(Armin Weigel/AFP/Getty Images)
(Sebastian Willnow/AFP/Getty Images)
(Jean-Francois Monier/AFP/Getty Images)
(Lex Van Lieshout/AFP/Getty Images)
(Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images)
(Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
(Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
(Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
(NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images)
(Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images)
(Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images)
(Radek Mica/AFP/Getty Images)
(Radek Mica/AFP/Getty Images)
(Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images)
(Arno Burgi/AFP/Getty Images)
(Morne de Klerk/AFP/Getty Images)
(Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images)
(AFP/Getty Images)
(Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images)
(Dan Kitwood/AFP/Getty Images)
(Lintao Zhang/AFP/Getty Images)
(Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
(AFP/Getty Images)
(John Moore/AFP/Getty Images)
(JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP/Getty Images)
(Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)
(Radek Mica/AFP/Getty Images)
(Jochen Luebke/AFP/Getty Images)
(Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images)
(Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images)
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