The African lion is more complex than we gave him credit for (Image: James P. Blair/National Geographic)

Species: Panthera leo

Habitat: Most of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the south and east, although numbers and ranges have declined rapidly in the last few decades – plus a small population in India

Seems like lions have been iconic forever. The Chauvet cave paintings in France, thought to be 30,000 years old, include many images of them.

Despite their fame, we still know surprisingly little about lions, not least because they are mostly nocturnal. The majority of our knowledge comes from research in one ecosystem: the Serengeti in East Africa.


In recent years biologists have been directing their interest at lions elsewhere, and found that these big cats are far more variable – in genetics, behaviour and morphology – than we thought. The Serengeti lions are by no means typical. This has been highlighted by two new studies which reveal the diversity in lion behaviours.

Paternity testing

Sexual practices differ greatly. In the Serengeti, an established male that controls a pride has exclusive mating rights over the females in the pride, assuring that any cubs born in the pride are his.

This system is tough on the lionesses and cubs. When new males take over they kill any existing cubs. To minimise the chances of future infanticide, lionesses become very sexually active just after a takeover. This may serve to increase competition among males, thereby ensuring that the pride is eventually run by a strong group of males which can maintain control for many years and provide stability for future cubs. One male is dominant, but in the post-takeover window some cubs may be fathered by other males in the pride.

Elsewhere, things are different. Some cubs born in Etosha National Park in Namibia turn out to be fathered by males from outside their own pride. Martha Lyke of the University of Texas at San Antonio and colleagues collected genetic data from 164 lions, including 90 members of 11 prides, allowing her to figure out which males fathered which cubs. Of 34 cubs with known fathers, 14 were sired by outsider males – over a third of the cubs.

While previous studies had suggested that females sometimes had cubs with outsider males, Lyke’s is the first strong genetic evidence, says Bruce Patterson of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Covering the bases

Among the prides in Etosha, the females were more likely to mate outside the group if there were fewer males controlling the pride. That could explain why paternity patterns differ between regions. In the Serengeti, all prides have at least two males, whereas in Etosha some have just one.

It is not clear why the females get the urge to breed with other males. It might minimise inbreeding, ensuring their cubs are genetically diverse. Alternatively, it could protect their cubs from infanticide. If a new male takes over a pride, but has previously mated with one of the females, he may be less likely to kill the cubs because they might be his. Females of other species have developed similar tricks to keep males on side.

Once the cubs are born, all the females in the pride share the task of bringing them up. The males do not normally help at all. But there has been one report of a male in the Kalahari that helped his sister take care of her cubs, in a rare case of “uncle” behaviour.

Lazy moochers

Hunting behaviours also vary in a big way. In the Serengeti, the females take the lead, hunting in packs on the open plains. Males don’t help, but simply take food from the females.

“The story was that male lions are these fat, lazy moochers,” says Scott Loarie of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. “The females make the kill and then the males slope over, eat their fill and then sleep under a tree.”

Loarie and his colleagues have studied lions’ hunting in Kruger National Park in South Africa, which is a more typical African landscape than the Serengeti because it has a lot of dense vegetation and woodland. “On the Serengeti you can see for miles in every direction,” says Loarie.

Stealth attack

The team fitted seven lions with GPS collars to track their movements. He also mapped the area from the air using a LiDAR system that built up a 3D picture of the vegetation. He found that male lions hunted in areas with denser vegetation, where the lines of sight were shorter, than the areas chosen by the females.

“The females are hunting in the open,” says Loarie. “The males have this solitary ambush strategy.” It seems the males rely on dense vegetation to keep them hidden until they are right on top of their prey.

It is not clear how male lions hunt in other regions, but Loarie points out that wooded areas are common. “Grasslands are an anomaly,” he says. So the Serengeti system, where males steal kills, may be atypical.

Walk on by

Patterson has studied lions in the woodlands of Tsavo in Kenya, and agrees that dense vegetation makes it harder for males to steal food. “We’ve seen females kill in Tsavo, and the males are 200 metres away and walk right by.”

Most cats are solitary, but lions may be so adaptable because they are sociable, Patterson says. In Prides: The lions of Moremi, biologists describe how one female serendipitously discovered how to hunt baboons, and taught her pride-mates.

The baboons climb trees to escape lions, but if one lion pretends to climb the tree the baboons panic and flee – and are pounced on by other lions lurking in the undergrowth. “Learned behaviours can be transmitted through these social groups,” says Patterson.

Save the lions

The great diversity in lion behaviours means that different populations will need different protection strategies. “No single prescription will work for lions throughout Africa,” says Patterson. “It’ll be different in woodland, grassland and desert.”

At the moment, conservation organisations recognise two main populations: African and Indian. But Patterson has taken genetic samples throughout both, and found that the main division is actually in the heart of Africa. Lions in southern and eastern Africa form one population, while lions in western and central Africa form a second – along with the Indian population.

It is not clear why lions have ended up distributed like that, but the point is that conservationists may be approaching lion protection in the wrong way. Losing one of the two African populations would be a big blow, because it would wipe out their unique genetic heritage – even though the “African” lions would survive.

Journal references:

Molecular Ecology, doi.org/kvw;

Animal Behaviour, doi.org/kvz;

Conservation Genetics, doi.org/kwp