RENDEZVOUS WITH LION WHISPERER
On World Wildlife Day, wildlife activist Dean Schneider speaks to us about the special bond that he shares with animals
At the age of 21, Swiss banker Dean Schneider ran a company that employed over a 100 people, and had “stuff which most of the people were dreaming of”. Despite that, and all the money he had, he felt “super wrong in the finance industry”, and somewhere he figured out that he was meant for something else. Then four years ago, fate took him to South Africa, which gave him a chance to “interact and to be surrounded by that type of wildlife which [had] always inspired me.”
The 10 days spent in South Africa made him realise that he had found his true calling. “Animals are emotionally same as [human] friendships and families. And this is why I decided back then, that my dream life and my mission is one flight away from me,” Schenider tells us over email. In the last four years, Schenider has established a wildlife sanctuary which is not very far from the town of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Although he has been dubbed the ‘lion whisperer’, thanks to his Instagram videos (he has around 5.8 million followers), where he is seen, interacting and playing with them, Schneider, shares that his wildlife canvas also includes cheetahs, hyenas and capuchins. “You can be an animal trainer and create a bond or relationship with an animal up to a specific level. But that will never ever be as strong as the bond they have with their own family and with their own beings,” he says.
“Since I’m not an animal trainer, I gained their trust and respect, by learning their language and becoming one of them. Of course, it entails a lot of patience as well as I look back on what I’ve built with these animals. And it’s not only the loving and beautiful situations. It’s same just like in any human relationship or in a in a friendship. You end up having fights, there are disputes and arguments, then you work it all out by building the trust again. It’s like that from both sides actually. It doesn’t matter if it’s between me and the lions or among the lions themselves. They treat me no different from their own family and this is something I have to adapt to once I spend time with them or when I’m in their environment,” he adds.
But, at the same time, Schneider, warns that while the relationship he shares with the animals is almost human-like, he doesn’t make the mistake of humanising them, which is what he feels, prevents humans from being with animals.
“I think one of the most important things is to learn to love them the way they are. We humans tend to humanise all the animals. If you look at the animal, the behaviour of a hyena, of a lion, of a wolf, of a of any predator animal, most of the time, humans won’t agree and won’t feel comfortable with it. Humans think [that] whatever seems to be hurting, or everything [that] seems to be brutal, is bad or evil, and you need to keep your distance. That’s also why a lot of humans think that hyenas are evil beings. They’re not, they’re wonderful beings. They can be extremely loving and amazing creatures. But still, humans just think they are terrible because we think they’re scavengers and are very brutal in the way they eat and kill other animals. But that’s wrong. We just look at it out of a human perspective,” he says, insisting that humans need to adapt to “love nature, the way nature and all its living beings are and are meant to be, and not the way we wish them to be.”
He signs off, hoping, to be “friends” with “more animals” in future, but admits that it’s not an easy process. “I had the opportunity to rescue them and take them to my property. So it’s not that I just go out there and choose certain animals, which I want to have and build a certain collection of my animals. Even the two new cheetahs were absolutely not planned to have them as rescues. It just happened through people I know who told me, that there are those two cheetahs and they need to be relocated and that’s how it happened,” he says.
I think one of the most important things is to learn to love them [animals] the way they are.
DEAN SCHNEIDER WILDLIFE ACTIVIST