01 Assemble a hunt
Lionesses fan and ambush; males join on large dangerous prey.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed73
Intelligence79
Range40
Resilience27
Cultural impact97
Ecological role79
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Quick answers
Why is the lion scored below the tiger on ecological role but above on culture?
Lions structure some savanna systems; elephants and wolves outrank both as engineers or keystones in this atlas. Culture is flags, churches and film -- lions win that axis. Scores stay relative across 24 types.
What is different about Gir lions?
Asiatic lions are a single-forest population with a distinctive belly fold and a thinner mane. A disease or fire there is a subspecies event.
Did Cecil change hunting policy?
The 2015 Hwange killing spiked petitions and some airline trophy bans. Zimbabwe and US Fish and Wildlife arguments did not end trophy hunting as a system.
Are lions recovering like some wolves?
No. Most African populations are still in long decline outside a few well-funded parks. VU is not a rebound band.
What did Born Free fix in the public mind?
Elsa the lioness (1960 book, 1966 film) made rehabilitation a children story. Field lion work is pride demography and conflict, not a single tame cat.
Who runs the Serengeti numbers?
The Serengeti Lion Project (Packer and successors) produced the long pride dataset that textbooks still mine.
IUCN: Vulnerable
Operating a lion life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Cooperative stalks on zebra, wildebeest and buffalo. Scavenge and kleptoparasitism (including from hyenas, and the reverse) are ordinary, not shameful.
Information before motion
Dawn and dusk vision, roar as a spacing sense. The mane is heat and status, not armour against a horn.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A lion without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. Poison, snares and shrinking prey outside fenced cores. VU is a continent-scale slide, not a Gir postcard.
Diagrams
Lion forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
Lion life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Kill by suffocation
Mouth on muzzle or throat -- a hold, not a tiger-style nape alone.
03 Squabble the carcass
Rank and sex decide who eats first.
04 Roar the night
Spacing and coalition advertisement.
05 Takeover risk
New males kill cubs -- the grim demography Packer tabulated.
06 Disperse subadults
Young males walk a gauntlet of people and other coalitions.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
Poison, snares and shrinking prey outside fenced cores. VU is a continent-scale slide, not a Gir postcard.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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