Lion

About the lion

The lion is a large, muscular cat in genus Panthera, with a broad chest, a short, rounded head, round ears, and a dark, hairy tuft at the tip of the tail that conceals a small, roughly 5 mm hard "spur" whose purpose isn't fully understood. It's sexually dimorphic: adult males are larger than females and carry the mane that makes the species so recognizable, extending from the head across the shoulders and chest. Among cat species, the lion is second in size only to the tiger, and its skeletal muscle makes up nearly 59 percent of its body weight, the highest proportion recorded of any mammal, built from a high share of fast-twitch fibers that deliver quick bursts of speed rather than long stamina.

Fur color ranges from light buff to silvery grey, yellowish red, or dark brown, with lighter underparts. Cubs are born with dark spots that fade as they mature, though faint spotting can persist on the legs and underparts into adulthood.

The mane is thought to have evolved between roughly 320,000 and 190,000 years ago. It starts growing in adolescence as testosterone rises and reaches full size by around age four, typically running brownish and tinged with yellow, rust, and black; males kept in the cooler climates of European and North American zoos tend to grow especially heavy manes. Not every male lion has one — populations in places such as Pendjari National Park, Senegal, Sudan's Dinder National Park, and Tsavo East National Park in Kenya are commonly maneless or nearly so, and castrated males typically grow little to no mane at all, since the trait depends on testosterone.

Behavior and diet

Lions are usually more active by day than other wild cats, though in places where they are persecuted by people they shift toward activity at night and at twilight instead. As an apex and keystone predator, the lion preys mostly on medium-sized and large hooved mammals across the grassland, savanna, and shrubland habitat it inhabits.

The species is unusually social for a cat, living in groups called prides made up of related females and their cubs, along with one or a few adult males who are unrelated to the females. Female pride members typically hunt together, while males compete with one another to gain or keep a place in the pride; unlike other cat species, female lions consistently interact with multiple males at once.

A male's mane appears to signal his fitness to females: males with darker manes tend to have greater reproductive success and hold their place in a pride longer, and they also carry thicker hair and higher testosterone, at the cost of being more vulnerable to heat stress — though the mane affects surface temperature only, not core body temperature. One competing idea holds that the mane also protects the neck during fights between males, but this is disputed, since observed fights, including those among maneless females and young lions, target the face, back, and hindquarters more than the neck. Injured lions also tend to lose mane.

A rare color variant, the white lion, results from leucism, a genetic condition rather than albinism, since eye and skin pigmentation stay normal. White lions have turned up around Kruger National Park and the adjacent Timbavati Private Game Reserve in South Africa; removed from the wild in the 1970s, they are now selected for breeding in captivity, and 17 births were recorded across five prides between 2007 and 2015.

Range and habitat

During the Neolithic period, lions ranged across Africa and much of Eurasia, from southeastern Europe to India. Today the species survives only in fragmented populations across sub-Saharan Africa, plus a single population in western India, and lion populations are not considered viable outside designated protected areas. The lion inhabits grassland, savanna, and shrubland habitat.

Two subspecies are currently recognized: P. l. leo, which includes the Asiatic lion population in India along with lions in West and northern Central Africa, and P. l. melanochaita, found across East and Southern Africa. Both groups include populations that have already gone extinct — the Barbary lion within P. l. leo and the Cape lion within P. l. melanochaita.

Conservation status

The lion has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1996. African lion populations have declined by roughly 43 percent since the early 1990s, and while the exact cause isn't fully understood, habitat loss and conflict with humans are considered the greatest concerns. Lion populations are not considered viable outside of designated protected areas.