Dnyaneshwari's Animal Planet: अहा कटा हें वोखटें । मृत्युलोकींचें उफराटें ।

Alfred Edward Housman:

"For nature, heartless, witless nature,

  Will neither care nor know

What stranger's feet may find the meadow

  And trespass there and go,

Nor ask amid the dews of morning

  If they are mine or no."

James Parker says: "Character, human character, expressed through relationship with bird, beast, or fish—that’s the Animal Planet method. "

This is so  because Animal Planet is not about animals it's about us, humans! 

James Parker continues:

“And if nature asks us to treat it with humor?” enquired Czeslaw Milosz, introducing a poem by Robert Francis in the anthology 'A Book of Luminous Things': If Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit, and his friends-and-relations, if all that humanization is precisely what nature expects from us? In other words, perhaps we are unable to say—to tell her—anything, except ascribing to her sadness, smiles, ominousness, serenity?  What a canny poet Milosz was. Nature unobserved, unsentimentalized, unpolluted with our delusions, is just a bunch of stuff eating itself. Here endeth the lesson of Animal Planet: it’s all about the human. Oh, Homo sapiens. Oh, blessed biped. Oh, you."

 "Nature is just a bunch of stuff eating itself."

But the nature in Dnyaneshwari is closer to the truth than in the animal planet.

Exhibit 1:

Dnyaneshwari (ज्ञानेश्वरी, अध्याय ९ राजविद्याराजगृह्ययोग):

"जंव जंव बाळ बळिया वाढे । तंव तंव भोजें नाचती कोडें । आयुष्य निमालें आंतुलियेकडे । ते ग्लानीचि नाहीं ॥ ५११ ॥

जन्मलिया दिवसदिवसें । हों लागे काळाचियाचि ऐसें । कीं वाढती करिती उल्हासें । उभविती गुढिया ॥ ५१२ ॥ अगा मर हा बोलु न साहती । आणि मेलिया तरी रडती । परि असतें जात न गणिती । गहिंसपणें ॥ ५१३ ॥

दर्दुर सापें गिळिजतु आहे उभा । कीं तो मासिया वेटाळी जिभा । तैसे प्राणिये कवणा । वाढविती तृष्णा ॥ ५१४ ॥

अहा कटा हें वोखटें । मृत्युलोकींचें उफराटें । एथ अर्जुना जरी अवचटें । जन्मलासी तूं ॥ ५१५॥"

(As a child grows, they fondle it with great joy and do not grieve that its life is getting reduced. A child comes under the sway of death from its very birth, but they celebrate its birthday with great pomp. O Partha, people cannot bear to hear the name of death and mourn when a relation dies. But they do not foolishly consider how their life is getting spent. When the serpent is swallowing the frog, the latter is catching flies with its tongue. In the same way, being increase their desires. Alas! How foul and perverse are the things of this mortal world! O Partha, even though you are born in this world by mere accident (511-515), spurn it and take to the path of devotion, by which you will come to my eternal abode.)

Snake is eating frog, frog is eating fly...

Exhibit-II:

"हें जाणों मृत्यु रागिटा । सिंहाडयाचा दरकुटा । परी काय वांजटा । पूरिजत असे ? ॥६०॥

महाकल्पापरौतीं । कव घालूनि अवचितीं । सत्यलोकभद्रजाती । आंगीं वाजे ॥६१॥

लोकपाळ नित्य नवे । दिग्गजांचे मेळावे । स्वर्गींचिये आडवे । रिगोनि मोडी ॥६२॥

येर ययाचेनि अंगवातें । जन्ममृत्यूचिये गर्तें । निर्जिवें होऊनि भ्रमतें । जीवमृगें ॥६३॥

न्याहाळीं पां केव्हडा । पसरलासे चवडा । जो करूनियां माजिवडा । आकारगजु ॥६४॥

म्हणौनि काळाची सत्ता । हाचि बोलु निरुता । ऐसे वाद पंडुसुता । क्षेत्रालागीं ॥६५॥"

("This Kala is dreadful like a den of lions. If after knowing this you indulge in empty talk, how will it help you? This Kala will hold in his fatal grip all of a sudden even the blessed denizens of Satyaloka at the final dissolution of the world. He enters the heavenly woods and destroys the eight regents and elephants that guard the eight quarters. In the whirl of this Kala, the deer in the form of human beings become dispirited and wander in the pits of births and deaths. Just see how this Kala has spread out his paw and has held in it the elephant in the form of the world and so the supremacy of this Kala over the Field is the sole truth.

O Arjuna, these are different views about the Field. (61-65)")

In this instance lion overpowering elephant and deer...

And the lions are not just in jungles and zoos...

Artist: Charles Barsotti, The New Yorker, February 8 1999