Problem: Catching a Lion in the Desert

Some funny approaches to “solve” the problem.

I particularly liked this one:

The Dirac method

We 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. We leave catching a tame lion as an execise to the reader.

And also this other one (which appears in this MIT page):

The Hilbert (axiomatic) method

We place a locked cage onto a given point in the desert. After that we 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.

There is a number sites “solving” the problem, probably the most complete of all is this blog post, Bjørn’s maths blog: How to catch a lion in the Sahara desert.

Image source: BI, Unbelievable shot shows lion milliseconds from attacking photographer.