One of the most gut-wrenching moments in The Lion King, is when Simba watches his father Mufasa fall to his death. Disney really struck a chord in the hearts of both kids and adults by forcing us to deal with parental loss. To make matters even worse, Simba’s diabolical uncle, Scar manipulates the young lion into thinking Mufasa’s death was his fault. Devastated by the loss of his father, Simba found himself alone in the jungle.
Luckily, Simba’s solitude didn’t last long. The poor lion cub is taken in by Timone and Pumbaa, an unlikely pair who survived in the wilderness on a diet of disgusting bugs. Though he’d been a carnivore up until that point, Simba learned to survive of the of the meerkat and warthog’s insect-filled meals as well.
But there’s just one major flaw here. As Reddit user Secretninja35 suggests, lions eat about 10-25 pounds of food in a day. Though insects and grubs are a good source of protein, lions are enormous animals and Simba would have had to ingest six grubs per minute (without ever sleeping) in order to survive. Apparently, lions need something around 8,000 to 9,000 calories per day to thrive (lucky) and a diet of crickets just would not be nourishing enough.
It doesn’t help the fact that Simba lived with Timone and Pumbaa during puberty so he would have probably needed even more food in order to grow into the massive lion that he became. We wonder if Disney will let Simba return to his all-meat diet during his time with Timone and Pumbaa in the upcoming live-action version of The Lion King.
