African Jungles, Plains, and Waterways
NURSING AND PLAY. A cub is a hungry bundle of energy. Nursing nourishes its body, while play prepares its muscles for the sprinting ambushes it will need later in life.
Vital Stats
ORDER Carnivora
FAMILY Felidae
SCIENTIFIC NAME Panthera leo
HABITAT Steppe, bush, or savanna
SIZE
Male length, 5.5–8ft, shoulder height 4 ft Female length, 4.5–5.5 ft, shoulder height 3.5ft
WEIGHT Male, 330–550 lb Female, 265–395 lb
MAXIMUM AGE 30 years in captivity, average is 15
If your delicate Siamese cat seems content to get along without you, can you imagine how independent and aloof a 550-pound lion must be? Lions must not need a soul to help them survive, right? In reality, lions are a particularly social species, dependent on one another to catch prey and to pass on healthy offspring.
To understand how this system of cooperation evolved, it’s helpful to look at the forces that shaped the lion.
Lions evolved in a land of opportunity. Hoofed prey streamed across the African savanna by the millions, giving rise to a variety of predators, each with a slightly different hunting strategy or niche. Most carnivores concentrated on the old, sick, or very young members of prey populations, zeroing in on species that weighed 220 pounds or less. Lions took a grand detour in feline evolution, however, and began to hunt together in small groups. Through cooperation and stealth, they were able to exploit perfectly healthy prey over 550 pounds, giving them access to kongoni, wildebeest, zebra, warthog, topi, impala, and even the massive giraffe! Cornering this market made them the moguls of their habitat.
Although it’s possible for a single lion to bring down one of these animals on its own, it’s not exactly a sure bet. In one study, only 17% of all solo hunts yielded dinner. When two or three lions joined forces on a cooperative hunt, however, their success rate doubled. This advantage, more than any other, led to the evolution of a social lifestyle in Africa’s savanna-living lions.
Lions live in groups called prides, composed of 3 to 12 females of breeding age, 2 to 4 (usually 2) breeding-age males, and cubs of various ages. The size of the pride varies with locale but can range from 5 to 37. Although pride members share a common territory and are friendly when they meet, you’ll rarely find them all together in one place. They spend most of their time in hunting groups
of twos and threes. When these subgroups happen to meet in the field, it’s easy to tell which lions belong to the same pride and which do not. Outsiders are not tolerated in the territory; both male and female lions act quickly to chase away intruders.
Group living, as it turns out, is well worth defending. Besides providing strength in numbers when it comes to hunting and defense, the close family ties also make cub-raising a whole lot easier. Females in a pride come into estrus around the same time, and, down the road, births are synchronized as well.
Nursing, rearing, and protecting cubs are communal endeavors, with all females caring for all cubs, including their own. This day care allows females to leave periodically for hunting without worrying about their young being harassed by predators or intruding male lions.
Intruding males are part of the nomad class of lion society—animals that live on the outskirts of prides, waiting for their chance to be part of a group. All young males and some surplus females become nomads when they are forced to leave their family pride to find territories of their own. This self-regulating mechanism keeps prides at a reasonable size so their appetites won’t outstrip the hospitality of their habitat.
On the Serengeti Plain, nomads form 20% of the lion population. They hold no territory and must travel long distances to find food, working that much harder than pride members because they are hunting alone. Pregnant female nomads (usually mated by a male nomad) also have a harder time raising their cubs to maturity because of the lack of communal day care and protection by males. The only way for nomads to improve their lot is to create their own pride or to join an already established group. Where pride rosters are filled to capacity, understudies must wait for a pride member to die before they can fill in the gap.
If a natural gap doesn’t become available, male nomads often attempt to force their way into a pride. Despite the danger, a coup d’etat is the only guaranteed way for nomad males to pass on their genes.
Ousting the dominants in an established pride is not an easy task, especially for one lion. Related males that leave a family pride at the same time often form gangs in order to improve their chances of cutting in on resident lions. If a gang does manage to invade, its members can look forward to only a 2-to 3-year tenure in their new pride. After that, they are likely to be driven out by yet
another marauding gang or a solo male that is younger or in better shape than they are. After being driven out, the defeated males again become part of the nomad population. This revolving door of personnel in and out of lion society is one of the more interesting aspects of their social behavior. Even a lone lion has a life to live, however, and their individual behaviors are worth studying as well.