Wonderin' Where the Lions Are

Singapore's merlion

The last two posts have featured furry felines of the stone lion variety. I like a good triple play as much as anyone, so I thought I'd revisit my old home grounds in Singapore to bring you the third in our series on stone lions of Indochina. Here in all its fishy, fuzzy glory is one of the most surreal things ever turned out by the tourism industry: the Singapore merlion. This mythical aquatic animal is no creature of ancient mythology. It was completely fabricated about 50 years ago by the Singapore Tourism Board. You'll find the merlion on keychains, refrigerator magnets, and coffee mugs in souvenir shops all over the island. So, why a hybrid between a lion and a fish?

It all comes down to the history of the word Singapore. As the story goes, the island was named by a prince from an ancient Indonesian civilization called Srivijaya, who stumbled upon the island during a hunting trip. In the Srivijaya language, the word Singa means lion. This solves the mystery of the lion's half of the merlion (the lion's share, if you will). If I were to guess, the other half of the beast is to be fished out of Singapore's geography. As an island nation, Singapore identifies with the ocean through its strategic port and rich fishing grounds. Or maybe they just thought a merlion would be a good pet for a mermaid.

In the origin story of Singapore's name, the prince caught a glimpse of a big cat on the island. If he ever really saw one, it probably wasn't a lion. Tigers, on the other hand, have a historic range that extends all the way into Indonesia, including the extant Sumatran tiger, as well as the extinct Javan and Bali tigers. Seems to me the prince got his lions crossed.

It's worth a mention here that there is a lion that has range in Asia. It's called the Asiatic lion. Although it doesn't seem to have ever reached as far as Singapore, its easternmost range is adjacent to historic tiger territory. Realistically, the lion and the tiger territory never overlapped significantly. They probably avoided each other or vied for hunting grounds. But if hybridization had ever been a possibility, well, you Napolean Dynamite fans out there know exactly what that implies: real life wild ligers. It's like my favorite animal.

Another note on lions: Singapore has a pride or two that skulks about in the zoo on the north side of the island. It's particularly fun to visit them at night, during the zoo's nocturnal animal exhibit. All the animal enclosures are designed to look like they're not there. That means you feel like you're in the lion's space when you first see the pride through a break in the trees. Your body courses with the fight-or-flight sensation. This feeling is even stronger when you don't see them, when all you hear is throaty roars in the darkness. The lion's power stirs our instinctive sense of awe and terror, as old as time. It's no wonder why depictions of lions are so pervasive across world cultures.

So next time you see a statue of a lion, try to imagine that prehistoric sense of the predator and prey relationship. For a moment, pretend the stone softens to flesh, a heart starts to beat, the lungs swell with breath. Feel what it's like to stand in the presence of one of these beasts. And if it falls over and flops around gasping for air, maybe you could be nice and push it into the water.