African Lion

Scientific classification:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae
Genus: Panthera
Species: P. leo

Binomial name:
Panthera leo
(Linnaeus, 1758

The lion :(Panthera leo) is a member of the family Felidae and one of four big cats in the genus Panthera. With exceptionally large males exceeding 250 kg (550 lb) in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger.

• Wild lions currently exist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia with a critically endangered remnant population in northwest India, having disappeared from North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia in historic times.

• Until the late Pleistocene (about 10,000 years ago), the lion was the most widespread large land mammal beside humans. They were found in most of Africa, much of Eurasia from western Europe to India and, in the Americas, from the Yukon to Peru.

• Should they survive the rigors of cubhood, lionesses in secure habitat such as Kruger National Park may frequently reach an age of 12–14 years whereas lions seldom live for longer than 8 years.However, there are records of lionesses living for up to 20 years in the wild.

• In captivity both male and female lions can live for over 20 years. They typically inhabit savanna and grassland, although they may take to bush and forest. Lions are unusually social compared to other cats. A pride of lions consists of related females and offspring and a small number of adult males.

• Groups of female lions typically hunt together, preying mostly on large ungulates. The lion is an apex and keystone predator, although they will resort to scavenging if the opportunity arises. While lions, in general, do not selectively hunt humans, some have been known to become man-eaters and seek human prey.

• The lion is a vulnerable species, having seen a possibly irreversible population decline of 30 to 50 percent over the past two decades in its African range;populations are untenable outside designated reserves and national parks. Although the cause of the decline is not well understood, habitat loss and conflicts with humans are currently the greatest causes of concern.

• Lions have been kept in menageries since Roman times and have been a key species sought after and exhibited in zoos the world over since the late eighteenth century. Zoos are cooperating worldwide in breeding programs for the endangered Asiatic subspecies.
  

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  Visually, the male is highly distinctive and is easily recognized by its mane. The head of the male lion is one of the most widely recognized animal symbols in human culture. It has been depicted extensively in literature, in sculptures, in paintings, on national flags, and in contemporary films and literature.
  
  

• The lioness has been recognized, however, as the pinnacle of hunting prowess from the earliest of human writings and graphic representations. The lionesses are the hunters for their pride and capture their prey with precise and complex teamwork.

• Each lioness develops specific skills for her role in the hunting techniques used by her pride and, generally, assumes that role during most hunts.

• Members of human cultures living among lions in natural habitats have understood this characteristic and often have chosen the lioness to represent their most ferocious war deities and warriors, often naming their male rulers as her "son".

• Examples drawn from the earliest of written records include the Egyptian pantheon deities of Sekhmet, Bast, Menhit, and Tefnut, and these deities may have had precursors in Nubia and Lybia.

• Other Egyptian deities are quite complex and assume aspects that may include one as a lioness headed human or a lioness in specific roles. Depictions of lions hunting in groups have existed from the Upper Paleolithic period, with carvings and paintings from the Lascaux and Chauvet Caves.

Naming and etymology:

• The lion's name, similar in many Romance languages, derives from the Latin leo; cf. the Ancient Greek λέων (leon). The Hebrew word lavi (לָבִיא) may also be related, as well as the Ancient Egyptian rw.It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis leo, by Linnaeus in his eighteenth century work, Systema Naturae.

• The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera leo, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and ther ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".

Taxonomy and evolution:

• The oldest lion-like fossil is known from Laetoli in Tanzania and is perhaps 3.5 million years old; some scientists have identified the material as Panthera leo.

• These records are not well-substantiated, and all that can be said is that they pertain to a Panthera-like felid. The oldest confirmed records of Panthera leo in Africa are about 2 million years younger. The closest relatives of the lion are the other Panthera species: the tiger, the jaguar, and the leopard.

• Morphological and genetic studies reveal that the tiger was the first of these recent species to diverge. About 1.9 million years ago the jaguar branched off the remaining group, which contained ancestors of the leopard and lion. The lion and leopard subsequently separated about 1 to 1.25 million years ago from each other.

• Panthera leo itself evolved in Africa between 1 million and 800,000 years ago before spreading throughout the Holarctic region. It appeared in Europe for the first time 700,000 years ago with the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis at Isernia in Italy.

• From this lion derived the later Cave Lion (Panthera leo spelaea), which appeared about 300,000 years ago. During the upper Pleistocene the lion spread to North and South America, and developed into Panthera leo atrox, the American Lion.

• Lions died out in northern Eurasia and America at the end of the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago;this may have been secondary to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna.

Taxonomy and evolution:

• The oldest lion-like fossil is known from Laetoli in Tanzania and is perhaps 3.5 million years old; some scientists have identified the material as Panthera leo. These records are not well-substantiated, and all that can be said is that they pertain to a Panthera-like felid.

• The oldest confirmed records of Panthera leo in Africa are about 2 million years younger. The closest relatives of the lion are the other Panthera species: the tiger, the jaguar, and the leopard. Morphological and genetic studies reveal that the tiger was the first of these recent species to diverge.

• About 1.9 million years ago the jaguar branched off the remaining group, which contained ancestors of the leopard and lion. The lion and leopard subsequently separated about 1 to 1.25 million years ago from each other.

• Panthera leo itself evolved in Africa between 1 million and 800,000 years ago before spreading throughout the Holarctic region. It appeared in Europe for the first time 700,000 years ago with the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis at Isernia in Italy.

• From this lion derived the later Cave Lion (Panthera leo spelaea), which appeared about 300,000 years ago. During the upper Pleistocene the lion spread to North and South America, and developed into Panthera leo atrox, the American Lion.

• Lions died out in northern Eurasia and America at the end of the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago;[16] this may have been secondary to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna.

Habits:

• Lions are the most social of the cat family. They live in prides consisting of one or two males, up to seven females and 14 or 15 cubs of different ages.

• Prides occupy territories that they defend against nomadic lions and other prides; this is done by the dominant male or males, by means of patrolling and scent marking.

• At about 3 years of age, young lions are evicted from their pride; they normally stay together, always on the move, becoming nomads, until they take over some other pride, whose male as become too weak or old, sometimes killing all the existing cubs.
  
  

• The female normally does all the hunting, usually at night, late afternoon or early morning. At a kill, the adults will eat first, with the male sometimes claiming it for himself, and, if anything left, the cubs will then take their turn. In times of scarcity this means very little food available for the cubs, and death by starvation.
  
  
• Scavengers, like vultures, hyenas and jackals, are attracted to lion kills in great numbers, and in some occasions a big group of hyenas will appropriate the kill of a small group of lions. The contrary also happens, with lions very often steeling from hyenas and jackals, and even climbing up a tree to appropriate a leopard's kill.
  
  
  

Range & Habitat:

• Thousands of years ago, lions were common throughout southern Europe, southern Asia, eastern and central India and over the whole of the African continent.

• Today, with the exception of some 300 highly protected animals in the Gir National Park of India, the only naturally-occuring lions are found in Africa. (But even in Africa lions have been wiped out in the north; the last Numidian male was shot as a trophy in the 1930s.) Lions do not live in heavy forests and jungles and they do not inhabit desert areas due to a scarcity of game.

• Reproduction and Rearing: Breeding occurs all year round, with 2 to 6 cubs being born after a gestation period of about 110 days. The lioness normally leaves the pride to give birth to her litter, in a sheltered spot where she leaves them, while hunting.

• At this stage the cubs are very vulnerable, sometimes being taken away by scavengers, like hyenas, while their mother is away.
  

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  If, at any stage doubtful about her cubs safety, the lioness will find another hide, and will transport them, on her mouth, one by one, to the new location. Once the cubs are big enough to follow their mother, she will take them to the pride and introduce them to their father. This is another crucial time in the cubs life, as nobody can predict the reaction of the male.

Diet:

• Lion's prey include mostly wildebeest, zebra, waterbuck, kudu, giraffe and buffalo.
  They also tend to attack young elephant calves. In difficult times they will even go for small prey, like porcupine, with disastrous consequences for both.
  

Status:

• As a result of widespread persecution, cats in the wild have become one of the most threataened major groups of land animals. Nevertheless, the African lion numbered perhaps 200,000 individuals in 1991.

• They are generally protected even through some 150 humans have been mauled in the Gir National Park alone. Conversely in the Skeleton Coast Park in West Africa's Namibia the lions are all gone. Some were killed outside park boundaries by livestock herdsmen; others were forced to leave by drought.