主题：【动物凶猛】佛教故事中报恩的狮子是什么品种 -- 萨苏

Panthera leo leo, as the breed is known formally in Latin, is famous in legend and history.

In Aesop's fables, it would have been a Barbary lion that spared Androcles in the arena, out of gratitude to the Greek slave who earlier removed a thorn from his paw.

Julius Caesar once put 400 of the animals on show. His rival Pompey went one better with 600.

In Ethiopia this century, the Emperor Haile Selassie tethered Barbary lions near his throne.

A Barbary was used as a model for the bronze lions seen today in London's Trafalgar Square.

Most recently, the menacing Scar in Disney's "Lion King" was patterned on a Barbary. Hill has "serious doubts," however, about whether the lion that roars before every MGM movie is a Barbary. "But we're checking it out," she says.

Barbaries, also known as Nubian lions, used to prowl widely in North Africa, which was then forested terrain. But by 1700, the last wild Barbary in Libya had been killed by farmers concerned about the threat to livestock.