Meet The Lion

The lion is actually the only social cat that truly prefers to live as a group in prides. These nomadic felines have a pack mentality where the females lead.

Lion fur is a golden yellow colour. Male lions that are mature have shaggy manes that range in colour from black, to red to the more common blond. The colour of a lion mane depends on its age, hormone level and of course genetics.

A male lion can grow as long as 3 meters and weigh up to 250 kilograms. In contrast females are slightly smaller and grow up to 2.7 meters long and weigh up to a maximum of 180 kilograms.

Apex Predator

The lion is an apex predator and this means its body is purposely built for hunting. Lions are both strong and compact and they possess powerful limbs and jaws that help them to take down their prey.

The lion prefers to eat large animals such as wildebeest and zebra’s. They are also opportunistic hunters meaning they steal from other predators such as leopards and hyenas. In the pride it is primarily the female who is the hunter.

Female lions mate approximately once every couple of years and usually give birth to between one to six cubs. Approximately 70 per cent of cubs do not make it past the first year and females in the pride tend to cooperate in raising cubs.

In the wild the male lion has a life expectancy of 12 years and females about 15 years. In captivity it is not unknown for a lion to live into their 20’s.

A pride can contain as many as 40 lions including adult females, adolescents and cubs. There is usually either one or two males attached to the group.

Females tend to stay with the same pride as their mother for their entire lives unless there is a food shortage which may cause the pride to split up. Males however are forced to leave the pride when they reach the age where they are old enough to compete with the alpha males.

Male lions tend to move around in groups of related individuals looking for prides where they can take over. Typically a male lives in a pride for between two to three years before they are forced to leave by a usurping group.

Lions Are Vulnerable

Lions could once be found throughout Europe North America and Africa though now they a principally found in Africa. There is a small population of lions in Western India known as the Asiatic lion.

Lions are threatened by habitat loss and hunting. They are also vulnerable to disease spread by domestic dogs. The population of African lions has declined by nearly half in just the last two decades because of farmers killing them in retaliation for loss of livestock.

Image Credit:Lions, Krugersdorp game reserve by Derek Keats, on Flickr