Scratching
FRIENDLY BEHAVIOR
GREETING When you’re a member of a pride, you rely on other members to
help you rear cubs, hunt, and defend your territory. To keep your relationships in good working order, you have to defuse tensions and constantly reinforce social bonds. One of the ways lions do this is by giving each other a proper greeting when they wake up, when reuniting, or before embarking on a communal activity such as a hunt. As you watch the greeting ceremony, think how similar it is to your own cat’s hello.
Greeting lions rub their heads and foreheads together, sometimes quite vigorously, humming and moaning as they do. In more elaborate greetings, they circle their rubbing partner, rubbing against its whole body, flicking their tail up and toward their partner’s back and swiveling their rump slightly toward its head. A small lion may rub its head or body under a large lion’s chin and then lean earnestly into its chest as if to get as much contact as possible. An abbreviated greeting may be as subtle as a slight bending of the head toward the other without touching.
These greeting ceremonies express peaceful intentions and may even spread a common odor through the pride. You’ll notice that females and cubs rub one another, and they rub males quite often, but the males rarely reciprocate. In their superior position, it seems that males don’t have to worry about building bonds or smoothing any ruffled fur.
Another kind of greeting to be on the lookout for is anal sniffing. One lion sniffs the anal area of the other, or both take a sniff at the same time. Lions that are unsure of each other’s identity are most likely to do this as a way of
“checking ID.” A male may also sniff a female, especially if she greets him with rubbing, circling, and tail raising. Her gestures are reminiscent of sexual moves, and he might be sniffing to see if there is more to her attentions than mere friendliness.
GREETING. Like domestic cats, lions greet each other by rubbing their heads and bodies together.
SOCIAL GROOMING In social grooming, lions lick each other’s face, neck, and shoulders—areas they can’t reach for themselves. The abrasive bumps on their tongue dig deep in the fur to remove skin irritants. Interestingly enough, it seems that social grooming dislodges more parasites than self-grooming because social partners lick against the grain of the fur, whereas solo groomers lick along the lay of their own fur.
Social grooming is more than just hygienic, however; it also acts as a social lubricant, reinforcing mutual dependence and friendliness. The dawn and dusk grooming and head-rubbing sessions are especially social in nature. Notice who grooms whom: in the wild, females groom males, cubs, and other females, but males don’t bother to groom anyone. The one time they come close is during courtship, when they may give the female some token grooming attention. As with rubbing, dominant males may not feel the need to appease anyone.
Grooming
SOCIAL PLAY Though cubs are famous for mischief, play is not the sole domain of the young. Lions maintain their playful natures throughout life, and it’s not unusual to see two females chasing, biting, and jumping on each other in a buoyant ruckus. Motherhood can also bring out the kitten in the mature cat.
Watch how good-natured a lioness can be, even when cubs are batting, nibbling, and crawling on her. If the action gets slow, she may twitch her tail up and down, as if inviting the cubs to catch the end if they can. This game, besides being irresistible, may serve to teach the cubs prey-catching behavior.
PLAY INVITATION. Cats will be kittens; to say, “Let’s play,” the lion lowers its forequarters in a friendly bow.
COOPERATIVE HUNTING One of the most common and by far the most
successful forms of hunting is the communal hunt, an exciting practice that you can see in nature films, if not at the zoo. The lion that first senses the prey cocks its ears and opens its eyes wide, staring fixedly in the prey’s direction. The other lions notice, and they too redirect their gaze. Once synchronized, one of the lions will set off in a straight path, while its partners set off at an angle, fanning out to encircle the prey. When the prey animal spots one of the lions, it runs the opposite way, often into the waiting jaws of the others.
CONFLICT BEHAVIOR
ROARING The lion’s best-known trademark is its full-throated, thundering roar, a long-distance telegram that tells other lions in all directions, “I am here, this is my territory!” In the zoo, you’ll often hear a lion roar in response to a loud sound, triggering a series of contagious roars among its exhibit-mates.
The carrying power of the roar is evolution’s answer to the vastness of the lion’s wild habitat. Even over a distance of 5 miles, neighboring lions may hear and answer the call. This communiqué helps lions in two ways: by warning intruding males that they are trespassing and by reuniting scattered pride members. Roars can also be effective at close range, especially when an aggressive lion wants to make itself look and sound larger than life.
Roaring
SCENT MARKING Scent marking is an attempt at long-distance communication of a more lasting nature. Even after the lion leaves, its scent will continue to tell others what, when, and perhaps even who left the mark. Lions,
like dogs, tend to mark anytime they come across a previously used scent post.
They may also scent mark when approaching one another and during aggressive encounters.
On the veldt or at the zoo, lions mark by backing up to a tree or bush, raising their tail, and emitting a backward spray of urine. By wetting a tree trunk or a bush, lions can post their message on a large evaporating surface and at a convenient nose height for other lions that pass by. Males spray most often, but females also get in the act when they are in heat.
Certain lions in zoos have found that one way to activate crowds is to back up to them and unexpectedly shoot a jet stream of urine 10 to 13 feet, far enough to cover the front row. Now that you know about the lion’s tendency to mark, however, you can watch for the raised tail and give them plenty of firing room.
Also keep your eye on the other lions in the exhibit; both urination and defecation appear to be contagious behaviors.
Lions can also mark when urinating from a crouched position. They wet their hind legs and then scrape them backward to leave a visual addendum to their chemical message. Lions will also mark by rubbing their head and mouth into the branches of a bush or tree, leaving saliva and skin gland secretions.
If there are trees in your exhibit, look for signs of claw raking—scratches or grooves running vertically down the trunks. Lions rake by gripping the trunk with their extended front legs and then drawing the claws down. The claws snag in the bark, helping to remove the loose claw sheaths and also leaving a visual and possibly olfactory message having social significance to other cats.
URINE SPRAYING. Resident lions spray their personal scent at nose height so lions that pass by will not miss it.
LOW-INTENSITY THREAT Roaring and scent marking are both mechanisms that keep lions well-spaced so they avoid confrontation with one another.
Whenever lions do cross over boundaries and are suddenly face-to-face, they switch to a visual communication mode to express threat. Lions use these same threat gestures to settle everyday disputes within prides, so there’s a good chance you’ll see them at the zoo.
The most subtle threat gesture is the direct stare. Within eyeballing range, this silent form of dominance gets the point across without wasting precious energy.
Lesser lions, if they know what is good for them, will simply move aside and
give the staring lion the right-of-way. A male lion will also assert his rank by strutting—raising himself up to his full stature on rigid legs, holding his neck bolt upright, and turning sideways so the opponent or the female he is trying to impress will see his inflated profile.
HIGH-INTENSITY THREAT If a lion needs to raise the ante on its staring or strutting threats, it may move to the high-intensity aggressive threat. Facial expression is all important here: the aggressive lion sinks its head between its shoulders, stares directly at its opponent, and opens its mouth slightly. It pulls the corners of its mouth so far forward that the lips form almost a straight line, nearly hiding the teeth from view. It rotates its erect ears so the openings face backward and the dramatic black spots on the backs of the ears face the opponent. To add a menacing touch, the lion may growl, cough, or lash its tail up and down. You can often see these aggressive threats at feeding time when hungry neighbors get too close.
When fear is mixed into the equation, a lion will issue a defensive rather than an aggressive threat. Defensive threats differ from aggressive ones in that the corners of the mouth are pulled back, the teeth are visible in a “long snarl,” the ears are laid back flat against the head, and the eyes are nearly shut. This is a cat that expects to be scratched and doesn’t want its ears or eyes hurt.
When fear begins to take the upper hand, the defensive lion turns away from its opponent, using the head-twist posture to avoid a direct stare. At its highest intensity, the fearful yet aggressive lion opens its mouth to expose all its teeth, then backs up its threat with lunges, bites, and slaps. This display is performed by females before copulation, by males during copulation, and by both sexes during tense encounters, especially over food.
If a fearful lion wants to avoid risky contact altogether, it will use the stalking walk, the crouching walk, and the crouch to sneak out of sight of rivals, predators, humans, or unexpected guests.
FIGHTING. Two males struggle for control of a pride.
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
When a female comes into heat (every 3 to 4 weeks on the average), the first male that finds her becomes her temporary consort. The other males in the pride usually respect his right and wait their turn without challenging him. Besides draining their precious energy, a fight at this point would be bad politics. Males need one another to fight off marauding gangs and are therefore hesitant to tarnish their esprit de corps or disable a team member. Besides, the male that is
waiting his turn is usually related to the consort, so even though he’s not the one mating, some of his genes are still being passed on.
The best reason for waiting without a fuss, however, is that opportunity eventually knocks for all the males. It would be impossible for a single male to keep up the sexual pace set by the estrous female. Once she comes into estrus and for the next several days, she will mate every 15 minutes on the average! At the same time, other females in the pride are coming into estrus, making even more matings possible. This phase of the cycle is phenomenally active. In one study, a male mated with two females, copulating a total of 157 times in 55 hours. He mated every 21 minutes on the average, with a breathing space ranging from 60 seconds to as long as 110 minutes, leaving little time for normal pursuits, including eating.
COURTSHIP Courtship usually takes place in the open, sometimes away from the rest of the pride. The male and female circle each other restlessly, performing a typical sequence of displays. The male signals his intention with a mating grimace, a sneezelike snarl in which he wrinkles his nose, pulls back his lips to expose his teeth, opens his mouth slowly, and rolls his head from side to side without a sound. It is similar to the defensive snarl except he makes no sound and opens his mouth quite slowly. If the female doesn’t immediately crouch in the mating posture, the male may move to her and begin to lick her fur, as if to groom her. If she still isn’t ready, she may get up and move away a few steps, tail looped high, with the male following her in a tight mating chase. Eventually, the female turns her rump toward the male, lowers her forequarters, and elevates her hindquarters in a crouched presenting posture.
Females are by no means passive in the courtship sequence. In one study, they initiated courtship in 57% of the cases by circling the male, rubbing against him, curling themselves around him, or crouching in front of him. Females tend to solicit males in captivity even more frequently than they do in the wild. You’ll see them presenting repeatedly, often treading with their forepaws as they do.
Zookeepers have also noted that estrous females often roll on their back, grabbing their own hindpaws and biting them. If you see a female doing this, you may want to stick around to see what happens next.
Mating grimace
Soliciting
COPULATION During copulation, the male grabs the female’s neck and shakes it, but with no force behind his neck bite. The female growls throughout mating, with her face tensed in an aggressive threat expression, except that her ear openings are facing forward instead of back. The male miaows during mating and wears the defensive threat expression. He lets out a drawn-out yowl as he ejaculates and then quickly dismounts.
Neck bite
POST-COPULATION Before he has a chance to get away, the female will turn, snarl, and even snap at him with an aggressive threat. You’d snarl too if you were a female lion. Males’ penises are covered with backward-pointing barbs that strongly stimulate the female as they withdraw, a shock that induces her to ovulate. Once away from the male, she takes a few steps and then rolls sensuously on her back, resting up for the next go-round.
Post-copulatory threat
PARENTING BEHAVIOR
CARING FOR YOUNG In the wild, a cub’s chances of surviving to age 2 are only one in five. The two or three littermates weigh only 3 pounds each and are blind and helpless at birth. In the early weeks before the mother takes them to live within the security of the pride, she is their sole caretaker. When she leaves to hunt or to socialize, she hides the cubs in the bushes as well as she can, but
they are still vulnerable to hyenas and leopards. When she returns to the area, she grunts or roars softly as if to say, “Come see me.” She may move them once or twice to different hiding spots, picking them up by the scruff of their neck and carrying them the way your house cat carries its kittens. For the first 2 months, she feeds them a diet of milk supplemented with meat.
At first glance, some of the lioness’s behaviors seem negligent, at least from a human perspective. If, for instance, there is only one cub, she will invariably abandon it to die, a move which, though it seems heartless, makes good ecological sense. By abandoning her single cub, she will be able to mate again and increase her chances of having a larger litter. Mothers can also seem rather selfish at the dinner table. A hungry mother will always satisfy her own hunger before she brings her cubs to the kill, and depending on the size of the prey there may not be enough left to keep all the cubs alive. This is especially true during the dry season when most prey species migrate north, and Serengeti lions must make do with the small Thompson’s gazelle. Once again, it’s a matter of investing in her own life, which is a surer bet than that of her cubs. Cubs are notoriously vulnerable to mishaps in their first few months, and the lioness needs to keep up her own strength if she is to make up for these losses and maximize her reproductive potential.
COMMUNAL CARE If the cubs do manage to survive their first 6 to 8 weeks, the mother introduces them to the pride. Here they are communally raised, along with the litters of other females born at the same time. Because they can suckle from any of the females, they are likely to live even if their mother perishes.
They start following mom to the kill as soon as they are big enough, and by 11 months, they are actually hunting with other lions. During these outings, they enjoy the protection of the males in the group, who are always on the lookout for predators or hostile takeovers by other males.
Despite this communal care, cubs retain a special relationship with their own mother, a tie that lasts for 2 years until she has her next litter. She does her best to keep them from dangerous situations (like getting on a male’s nerves) and brings only her own offspring to a kill site. You’ll have no trouble picking out mother-cub pairs at your zoo. The mothers are the ones being tugged and hugged and pounced on by hyperactive bundles of fur doing their best to find a free
nipple and shatter the limits of her patience.