Lion

The lion is the second-largest living cat after the tiger, and the only one that has built its whole way of life around living in a group. That single difference — sociality — shapes almost everything about how lions hunt, defend territory, and raise young.

Overview

Lions once ranged across Africa, southern Europe, the Middle East and into India. Today wild lions occupy a fraction of that range: scattered populations across sub-Saharan Africa, plus a few hundred Asiatic lions in and around India’s Gir Forest. They favour open country — savanna, grassland, and dry woodland — where herds of large grazers are within reach and there is enough cover to stalk them.

Physical characteristics

Adult males stand out for their mane, a ring of long hair around the head and neck that darkens and thickens with age. Males weigh 120–190 kg; females are smaller at 90–130 kg but are the pride’s primary hunters. Both sexes are built for short, powerful rushes rather than long chases: muscular forequarters, retractable claws, and a bite force suited to clamping the throat or muzzle of struggling prey.

A lion’s coat is tawny, which works as camouflage in dry grass. Cubs are born with rosette spots that usually fade as they mature.

Habitat and range

Lions are not fussy about habitat as long as two conditions are met: large prey and access to water or moisture-rich food. They reach highest densities in productive savanna ecosystems such as the Serengeti–Mara, the Okavango, and Kruger. They avoid dense rainforest and the interior of the largest deserts, though desert-edge populations exist in Namibia.

Diet and hunting

Lions are hypercarnivores: almost their entire diet is meat from medium to large hoofed mammals — wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, gemsbok, and young giraffe and elephant when the opportunity arises. A pride hunts cooperatively, with lionesses fanning out to encircle a herd and cut off escape routes. Success rates are modest, often around one in four attempts, which is why lions also scavenge freely and will drive hyenas, cheetahs and leopards off their kills.

After a large kill, a pride may not need to hunt again for several days. An adult can eat up to a quarter of its body weight in one sitting.

Behaviour and social life

The core of a pride is a group of related females who stay together for life, sharing hunting and cub-rearing. A coalition of one to four males — often brothers — holds tenure over the pride and its territory, typically for two to four years before being displaced by a stronger coalition.

Territory is advertised by roaring, scent-marking, and patrolling. When incoming males take over a pride, they usually kill dependent cubs; this brings the females back into breeding condition sooner. It is brutal arithmetic, and it is a major reason lionesses synchronise breeding and jointly defend cubs.

Reproduction and life cycle

There is no fixed breeding season. After a gestation of about 110 days, a lioness gives birth to one to four cubs in a secluded den and keeps them hidden for the first six weeks. Cubs in a pride are often raised communally, and females will nurse each other’s young.

Cubs depend on milk for about six months and stay with the pride until roughly two years old. Young females usually remain; young males are pushed out and enter a nomadic phase, roaming alone or with brothers until they are strong enough to challenge for a pride of their own.

Threats and conservation

The lion is listed as Vulnerable, with a decreasing trend. The population has fallen by roughly 43% between 1993 and 2014, and lions are gone from more than 90% of their historical range. The main pressures are:

• Habitat loss and prey depletion as land is converted to farming and livestock.
• Conflict with herders, who kill lions in retaliation for or in anticipation of livestock losses.
• Unregulated and poorly managed hunting, and a growing trade in lion bones and body parts.

Well-funded reserves with active management have stable or growing lion numbers, which shows the decline is reversible where there is investment and community support.