MATHEMATICIANS hunt Lions by throwing out everything that is not a Lion and catching one of whatever is left. Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique Lion before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate exercise. Professors of mathematics will prove the existence of at least one unique Lion and then leave the detection and capture of an actual Lion to their graduate students.

QUANTUM MECHANICS SCIENTISTS spend their time trying to ascertain whether a Lion is only visible when there is someone there to see it and go on to design fiendishly complicated traps for theoretical Lions involving small amounts of radioactive substances and glass vials of toxic vapour (Schrodinger's Lion). If they are uncertain about what they have caught it is a Heisenberg's Lion.

LOGICIANS don't hunt Lions; for them it is sufficient to prove the existence of Lions and Lion-hunters and an additional theorem which proves that Lion-hunters do indeed hunt Lions (at least in theory).

COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS hunt Lions by exercising Algorithm A.
1. Go to South Africa
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope
3. Work northward, traversing the continent alternately east and west
4. During each traverse
a) catch all observed animals
b) compare each animal caught to a known Lion
c) stop when a match is detected
Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known Lion in Cairo to ensure the Algorithm will terminate. Assembly language programmers prefer to execute Algorithm A on their hands and knees.

HARDWARE ENGINEERS hunt Lions by catching tawny animals at random and stopping when any one of them weighs plus or minus 15% of any previously observed Lions. (Owners of overweight Red Persian Longhairs beware!)

ECONOMISTS don't hunt Lions, but believe that if Lions are paid enough they will hunt themselves.

POLITICIANS hunt Lions by cutting off their social security payments as an incentive for Lions to hunt themselves.

PROTECTION RACKETEERS hunt Lions by making them an offer they can't refuse.

STATISTICIANS hunt the first animal they see n times and call it a Lion.

CONSULTANTS don't hunt Lions. Many have never hunted anything at all, but can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do. Operations Research consultants can also measure the correlation of hat-size and bullet-colour to the efficiency of Lion-hunting strategies, if someone else will only identify the Lion.

SENIOR MANAGEMENT set broad Lion-hunting policy based on the assumption that Lions are just like big Persians but with deeper voices.

SALESPEOPLE don't hunt Lions. They spend their time selling the Lions they haven't caught, for delivery two weeks before the season opens. Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for a Lion. Hardware salespeople catch Persian kittens, paint them tawny and sell them as desktop Lions.

QUALITY ASSURANCE INSPECTORS ignore the Lions and look for mistakes the others made when they were parking the jeep.

CAT FANCIERS don't hunt Lions but may attempt to breed them. However Lion-breeding strategy is affected by lack of CFA/TICA recognition of Lions and the fact that Lions don't fit into standard show-cages. Any hint of non-Lions in a 5 generation pedigree adversely affects recognition of Lions. Purists argue that any hint of non-tawny Lions (e.g. sporadic occurrence of White Lions, Dappled Lions) invalidates recognition. IRCA may already breed Genuine Lions (Trademark) in which case they will place advertisements which claim that Lions from other sources are half-bred or overbred lookalikes, there are rumours that they have already created the Leonoid, a cat which can be bred to any other cat and produce a Lion. Liberal-minded and progressive Lion-breeders attempt to extend the range of available Lions through outcrossing, resulting in Rex Lions (Li-Rex), Wirehair Lions, LaPerm Lions (LeoPerms), Sphynx Lions, Manx Lions (Li-Manx), Scottish Fold Lions, Spotted Lions, Colorpoint Lions (Liamese), Sepia Lions and calico Lions. Unfortunately most Lion-breeding experiments do not result in newly recognised Lion varieties, not because of genetic faults in the breeding stock, but because Lions view potential outcross mates, Lion breeders and show judges as between-meals snacks. Miniature Lions (Lunchkins, Leo Tois, Leopuras) may solve this problem.

Place a locked cage onto a given point in the desert then introduce the following logical system:

Axiom 1: The set of lions in the Sahara is not empty.
Axiom 2: If there exists a lion in the Sahara, then there exists a lion in the cage.
Procedure: If P is a theorem, and if the following is holds: "P implies Q", then Q is a theorem.
Theorem 1: There exists a lion in the cage.

Place a spherical cage in the desert, enter it and lock it from inside. Perform an inversion with respect to the cage. The lion is then inside the cage, and the lion-hunters outside the cage.

Without loss of generality, view the desert as a plane surface. Project the surface onto a line and afterwards the line onto an interior point of the cage. Thereby the lion is mapped onto that same point.

Divide the desert by a line running from north to south. The lion is then either in the eastern or in the western part. Assuming it is in the eastern part. Divide this part by a line running from east to west. The lion is either in the northern or in the southern part. Assuming it is in the northern part, continue this process arbitrarily and thereby construct with each step an increasingly narrow fence around the selected area. The diameter of the chosen partitions converges to zero so that the lion is caged into a fence of arbitrarily small diameter.

Observe that the desert is a separable space. It therefore contains an enumerable dense set of points which constitutes a sequence with the lion as its limit. Silently approach the lion in this sequence, carrying the proper equipment.

In the usual way construct a curve containing every point in the desert. It has been proven that such a curve can be traversed in arbitrarily short time. Traverse the curve, carrying a spear, in a time less than that required by the lion to move a distance equal to its own length.

Observe that the lion possesses the topological gender of a torus. Embed the desert in a four dimensional space. Then it is possible to apply a deformation of such a kind that the lion when returning to the three dimensional space is all tied up in itself. It is then completely helpless and may be caught.

Examine a lion-valued function f(z). Be \zeta the cage. Consider the integral

where C represents the boundary of the desert. Its value is f(zeta), i.e. there is a lion in the cage.

Obtain a tame lion, L_0, from the class L(-\infinity,\infinity), whose fourier transform vanishes nowhere. Put this lion somewhere in the desert L_0 then converges toward the cage. According to the general Wiener-Tauner theorem every other lion L will converge toward the same cage. (Alternatively, approximate L arbitrarily close by translating L_0 through the desert.)

Assert that wild lions can ipso facto not be observed in the Sahara desert. Therefore, if there are any lions at all in the desert, they are tame. Catching a tame lion is an exercise left to the reader. A can of Cat Chow may prove useful.

At every instant there is a non-zero probability of the lion being in the cage. Sit and wait.

Insert a tame lion into the cage and apply a Majorana exchange operator on it and a wild lion. As a variant, assume that we wish to catch (for argument's sake) a male lion. Insert a tame female lion into the cage and apply the Heisenberg exchange operator, exchanging spins.

All over the desert, distribute lion bait containing large amounts of the companion star of Sirius. After enough of the bait has been eaten, send a beam of light through the desert. This will curl around the lion so it gets all confused and can be approached without danger.

Construct a semi-permeable membrane which lets everything but lions pass through. Drag it across the desert.

Irradiate the desert with slow neutrons. The lion becomes radioactive and starts to disintegrate. Once the disintegration process is progressed far enough the lion will be unable to resist. If necessary, pick up the pieces and reassemble them - no-one said it had to be a live lion.

Plant a large, lens shaped field with cat mint (nepeta cataria) such that its axis is parallel to the direction of the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field. Put the cage in one of the field's foci. Throughout the desert, distribute large amounts of magnetized spinach (spinacia oleracea) which has, as everybody knows, a high iron content. The spinach is eaten by vegetarian desert inhabitants which in turn are eaten by the lions. Afterwards the lions are oriented parallel to the earth's magnetic field and the resulting lion beam is focussed on the cage by the cat mint lens.

Lock onto lion with transporter beam. Transport it directly into cage. It's lion-hunting Jim, but not as we know it!