That explanation from a “distribution insider” in yesterday’s (2.9) Variety story about Tuesday’s massive firings at Paramount due to the DreamWorks merger (109 out of nearly 129 employees — including “almost all senior execs [and] virtually all of former distrib president Wayne Lewellen‘s staff”) is fascinating because of the obvious parallels in male-lion behavior. “”They didn’t just get rid of high-level people,” the distribution insider told Variety‘s Ben Fritz and Chris Gardner. “Clearly, they didn’t want anybody from the old regime.” A nature website I’ve found says that “a male lion doesn’t tend to think in term of his species survival but in terms of his survival through his progeny, meaning that anything that gets in the way of this is a threat…even other cubs of his own species. If the male wants to procreate and encounters a female with cubs, his natural instinct is to get rid of the cubs of another lion so she’ll bear his cubs, thus insuring the survival of his progeny.”