A London Assembly member has been mocked online after claiming people don't need to wear face coverings to help stop the spread of coronavirus - citing the rather bizarre reasoning of 'Lions don't wear masks'.
David Kurten, 49, made the strange claim on Twitter on 30 December, posting a stock image of a lion - who was not wearing a mask. I know, the audacity.
After making his not untrue but wholly irrelevant point, many social media users swept in to criticise Kurten's tweet.
One person commented: "Lions don't wear seat belts either. Lions don't eat vegetables. Lions don't brush their teeth or wipe their butts. Lions don't socialise outside their family group. So what? We are humans. And we have brains which are capable of understanding the nature of disease prevention."
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It also sparked a chain of people responding to the tweet with other, equally pointless statements about animals and their habits.
Comedy writer James Felton said: "Yes, famously very few lion epidemiologists though David.
"If I'm honest I can't think of a single lion epidemiologist."
Someone else posted an image of an armadillo and captioned the photo: "Armadillos don't use microwaves."
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Another shared a picture of ducks and said: "Ducks don't wear top hats."
Twitter users also pointed out that Kurten's tweet was undermined by the fact that four lions had tested positive for Covid-19 at Barcelona back in December.
The BBC reported that the three female lions and one male had tested positive for the virus after displaying 'mild symptoms'.
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Despite the backlash, Kurten appeared to be pretty pleased with his comments, after the lion tweet prompted more than 5,000 quote tweets.
In a follow-up tweet, he also reshared the original post and told people: "See it again."
He then bragged: "My most popular tweet with 17 million impressions."
Kurten, who earns £58,543 a year from the London Assembly, was recently branded 'irresponsible and reckless' by Conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey after saying he would refuse a coronavirus vaccination.
Tweeting on Monday 28 Dec, Kurten said: "Main stream media vaccine propaganda continues with no mention of the CDC figure of 2.8% who suffer serious debilitating side effects, or that 99.7% of people can fight off SARS-Cov-2 with their own immune system.
"I will not be taking an experimental Covid vaccine and I am not recommending it."