1993 Darwin Awards

Kung Fu Lion

Historic Darwin Award Winner
Confirmed by Darwin

(Late 1989, Australia) A rather impressionable student of kung fu listened with rapt attention when his instructor dramatically informed the class, "Now that you have reached this level in your training, you can kill wild animals with your bare hands!"

The martial arts trainee took the statement as gospel, and headed to the Melbourne zoo to test his mettle with the wildest animal of all: the lion. In the dead of night, he slipped into the zoo, leapt into the lion enclosure, and engaged a suitable king of the jungle in combat.

He would probably have lost a one-on-one fight, but he never got to try. His naive fight plan didn't account for the enthusiasm of the lion's pride for a tender intruder; nor did it give sufficient weight to the possibility that his instructor didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Zoo employees found his remains -- two arms and hands -- the following morning, with shreds of red fur grasped tightly in his fingers.

Darwin asks, "Can you confirm this? It's nearly confirmed, but I'm not entirely convinced. Thus far, two readers remember the newspaper report, and a third reader saw autopsy photographs of an identical mishap while training for law enforcement in Australia in the early 1990's. If you have solid information, please Contact Darwin.

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Submitted by: Peter Mitchell, Grim, Craig Cooper
Reference: None

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