Animals Directory

Archive for the ‘African lions’ Category

Admired for his nobility, loyalty, skill, strength and courage throughout history, have found drawings of lions made by men for over 15,000 years. However, the lion is only the second largest of the cats (the largest is the tiger) and is not the fastest. Male lions in the wild can grow to 3 meters, including its tail, and the lionesses a little less. They weigh between 150 and 225 kilos and live between 15 and 20 years.

Despite his reputation as a ferocious animal, lions are very social within their herd. There is always more lionesses lions in a pack that can have from 3 to 40 animals.

They are the lionesses do most of the hunting and caring for puppies and teach them to hunt. They also tend to give birth to their pups at the same time (usually 3 to 4 pups lioness) and help each other with raising the young. There are always more females than males in a herd. When a male becomes the leader of their group, often the first thing to do is kill all the puppies to eliminate the legacy of his predecessor and ensure that all future cubs have their genes.

The most important role of males in a pride of lions is to defend the territory. A lion’s roar can be heard at a distance of 8 kilometers and is designed to warn potential intruders and to call members of his flock to return to the group. It is also used to communicate with other prides of lions living in the neighborhood.

Despite its reputation as a hunter, the lion is relatively clumsy and only achieves his goal hunt in 20-30% of his attempts. They hunt as a team and if they fail to achieve anything, have no problem taking over the remains of an animal hunted by another species. That’s why they call it “opportunistic.” After the hunt, lions tend to eat first, then the lionesses (often with fights between them) and lastly the cubs. The lions live in Africa are considered endangered animals and the few that survive in Asia is considered endangered species.

Females engaged in hunting and raising pups, while males are principally engaged in defending the boundaries of the territory. Young males are expelled from the group shortly before reaching maturity. Becoming nomadic for a couple of years to develop enough to try and establish their own pack. At this stage when males form coalitions.

At lunchtime, the dominant males are the first, followed by adult females and young, and the puppies are final. The most common prey are wildebeest, zebra and cape buffalo. Although there are occasions that can strike young giraffes and elephants.

The lions are polygamous and the female curia every 18 or 26 months in the wild, in captivity, lions breed once a year. After a gestation period of 110 days, the female gives birth to a number of puppies between one and four, who are born with thick, spotted fur. In captivity, a lion can live to be 30 years old, but in nature the average is 12 years for males and 16 for females.

Currently, the habitat of lions is restricted almost entirely to sub-Saharan Africa remains the preferred bio-me of these predators, the savannas, as well as the Sahel. Of the African lion subspecies exist in historical times that of the Cape disappeared in 1865 and the Atlas became extinct in the wild in 1922, due to hunting carried out by humans. The Atlas Lions now only survives in some zoos.

It is common belief that lions are unique to Africa, but also lived in prehistoric Europe and Siberia, arriving to colonize western North America during the last glaciation. When this ended the American and European lions became extinct, even in times of classical Greece had Asiatic lion populations in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Until medieval lions were quite common in the Near and Middle East as well as in the Indian subcontinent. Testimony to this are the many Assyrian and Persian reliefs that show how the lion hunt was a sport of royalty. Even the current emblem of India, taken from the ancient Maury, has three lions. Also in the Bible several times made mention of lions that lived in the Near East.

The Asiatic lion is less bulky and less populated mane African lion. At present the few Asiatic lions living in the wild live mostly in remote places of the Thar desert, while slightly more than 350 copies are in the National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary Ger, south of the province Gujarat.