World Lion Day: Lions Are Vanishing

“Africa’s parks hold the most charismatic species on the planet – giraffe, elephant, hippo, zebra, lion, leopard and cheetah – a true global heritage. It’s up to all of us to help cover the costs of protecting these species. If the lion goes extinct, all these other species will go as well. ”

— Dr. Craig Packer

Food for thought on this World Lion Day:

Little more than a century ago, there were more than 200,000 wild lions living in Africa. Today, there are only about 20,000; lions are extinct in 26 African countries.

The lion is listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, owing mostly — though not exclusively — to habitat loss.

Other facts of interest about lions, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF):

• Lions live in prides with related females and up to three unrelated males; female lions live together their entire lives. A typical pride has about 15 members, though some prides as large as 40 individuals have been observed.

• The lion is the second largest of the big cats, by length and weight: A male weighs about 500 pounds and grows to eight feet in length. It sounds impressive, but tigers are actually larger, reaching 850 pounds and 11 feet long.

• A lion may sleep up to 20 hours a day.

• A lion’s heels don’t touch the ground when it walks.

• Even though the lion is sometimes referred to as the “king of the jungle,” it actually lives in grasslands. The expression may have come from a misplaced association between Africa and jungles, or may refer to a less literal meaning of the word jungle.

• A lion can run for short distances at 50 mph and leap as far as 36 feet.

• A lion’s roar can be heard from as far as 5 miles away.

• The lion was once found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe but now exists only in Africa with one exception. The last remaining Asiatic lions are to be found in Sasan Gir National Park in India, which was primarily created to protect the species. Currently, there are roughly 350-400 lions in the park.

• Lions live for about 10-14 years in the wild, but have been known to live as long as 20 years in captivity.

This last figure raises any number of moral, ethical

and emotional questions. Since lions live longer in captivity, that would seem to suggest they are happier there, but the reality is that life in a cage, or even a large, outdoor pen, is no life for a predator.

The truth, too, is more complicated for lions in the wild, where it’s all too easy to infer that the combination of stress and constantly having to hunt for food wears knocks years off the back end of a lion’s life.

The hard truth is that few if any lions die of old age. Pride males are deposed by younger challengers; evicted from the pride and are often injured from a fight and so are incapable of hunting on their own. Long before they have a chance to starve, they’re set upon by other predators, especially hyenas and other lions, because they’re perceived to be a threat to a finite amount of food resources.

Older females are not chased out of the pride, but as they lose their ability to hunt, they’re often relegated to the back of the line when food is scarce. Lions are social animals — the most social of the big cats — but that sociability only goes so far.

“Lion conservation is expensive,” University of Minnesota field biologist and Serengeti lion researcher Dr. Craig Packer explained recently. Packer, author of Into Africa (2004) and Lions in the Balance (2015), is widely considered to be the world’s leading authority on lion behaviour and conservation. “The price is far too high to be borne entirely by the poorest countries on Earth. Lions sometimes eat people and livestock; these devastating losses are suffered by impoverished rural communities. In the U.S., U.K. and European Union, national parks are funded by tax revenues. African parks are funded by visitor entrance fees or hunting fees. However, these revenues are far too small for wildlife to ‘pay its own way.’”

The future, as always, looks uncertain. World Lion Day celebrates one of nature’s most iconic, recognizable animals, but who’s to say what the future holds?

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2016/10/11/african-lions-on-the-brink-a-conversation-with-lion-expert-craig-packer/

©Alex Strachan - Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya

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How To Become a Real-Life Lion King

“Firstly — and this is a tricky one — try to be born in one of just a handful of places that have full protection for lions. Today, over 60% of lions live in non-protected areas. With only 20,000 lions left in Africa, that means only about 8,000 lions are really secure.”

— Beverly Joubert

How do you become a #RealLifeLionKing, field researcher, wildlife filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Beverly Joubert asked the other day, on her Facebook page.

As might be expected, the truth is both more interesting — and yet similar in a lot of ways — than any Disney movie.

Be nice to your brothers, Joubert counsels. “We know they are irritating and it’s the best fun to pull their tails and toss them off their castle-like termite mounds, but male lions that have a coalition with their brothers win fights.”

Joubert, who’s earned her stripes — literally; she was nailed by a buffalo and almost gored to death two years ago in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where she and her filmmaker life-partner Dereck Joubert have made their home for the past 25 years — cites studies that show that when two lion kings are confronted by four or more would-be young usurpers to the throne, the younger lions often win, even though they may lack the individual strength, wisdom, knowledge and life experience of the older lions.

A real life lion king knows how to find the shade. Male lions, kings, princes and challengers to the throne alike have large manes — much larger than the Asiatic lions — and if they could sweat (they can’t) they’d be dripping wet. Male lions, on average, are about 12% hotter than females, Joubert says. They sleep a lot during the day — 16 hours, on average — and even while awake, they pant constantly as a way of moderating their body temperature.

Real life lion kings know to treat their sisters and aunts with respect. Male lions, Joubert notes, “usually wake up around meal times, which is when the ladies might have killed something.”

And this is key. For all Hollywood’s press publicity machine about lion kings, the Disney kind and the real kind you might find in the Serengeti and Maasai Mara, it’s no lie that females make better hunters, even though they’re smaller, considerably in some cases.

Yet again, science makes the best explainer. As wildlife researcher Stefan Pociask explained last year to Forbes, via Quora, lionesses are about 30% faster, both off the ground and over long distances. Lionesses often top out at 45 mph; lions, at best, manage 35 mph. Lionesses hunt by stalking. Lions, on the other hand, rely on their strength; they’re called on when the prey is big and tough, like a buffalo. Most lionesses can’t handle a buffalo on their own. Also, lions kill using their jaws, to bite down and suffocate their intended victim, or by biting through the skull. Even sizeable lions can take an awful beating when trying to bring down a buffalo. Lionesses are most effective during the annual wildebeest and zebra migrations, but even a coalition of lionesses would be wary around a buffalo.

Lions use their manes for territorial display, but manes can be an awful impediment for alone male on the hunt, which is why older males that have been ejected from the pride often die a lonely and hungry death. Lionesses are lithe and tend to blend in with their surroundings, but lions resemble a giant haystack when trying to stalk in broad daylight. (It’s probably no coincidence, though it’s a matter of intense controversy and debate, that the infamous Tsavo man-eating lions that, incredibly, killed and devoured 31 railroad workers over a 10 month period during the ill-fated construction of the Mombasa-to-Uganda rail line in East Africa in 1898, were maneless.)

If you want to do more than simply take in another Hollywood movie, Joubert suggests that you check out #FutureLionKings https://greatplainsfoundation.com/lionking/ .

Lions face an uncertain future in the wild. Whether male newborns survive to become king is often the luck of the draw, Joubert says.

“Try to be born where there is no lion hunting. Around 560 lions are legally allowed to be hunted each year in Africa, so as you grow up — depending on which country you’re in, and if you are a male — the odds are not in your favour. Only about one in eight male lions who are born actually make it to being King.”

©Field Museum, Chicago. The Tsavo man-eating lions (1898).

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