Mara the Lioness domesticated dog. Along with animal lovers, naturalists and experienced game wardens, they held the belief that integration back into the wild would harm Mara, rather than benefit. Mara did not fear man and indeed went out of her way to approach and play. This posed an enormous risk to her safety. In addition, release into the wild would place Mara and the other lionesses at risk of contracting "Babesia". Domesticated animals have no resistance to the fatal disease, a fact which George and Joy Adamson knew. Their lion Elsa had died of the same disease not less than two years
Joy Adamson her grandmother. In her autobiography "The Searching Spirit", Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me". She grew up on an estate near Vienna, was educated in Vienna earning a music degree before studying sculpting and medicine. As a young adult, Adamson considered careers as a concert pianist, and in medicine. Joy Adamson married three times in the span of ten years. Her first marriage was to Viktor von Klarwill (aka Ziebel; 1902-1985). She went to Kenya in 1937 where she met and married in 1938 the botanist Peter