Lion (Panthera leo)

[guategojira]

Mar 26, 2014 4:40:27 GMT 5 Vodmeister said:

I remember how on AVA Boldchamp and MellivoraCapensis42 claimed that male lions in central Kenya averaged 203.3 kg, a sample which included 272 kg (599 lb!) specimen. Was this ever verified?

In fact, no single evidence is presented that the male of 272 kg was actually weighed or if even existed.

The original source is Nowell & Jackson (1996) and this is the source that the new documents quote. However, they (N & J) quote Richard Kock as the primary source. However, when Bold and Tigerlover communicated with him, he gives two different opinions, what it was really established is that he don’t even remembered that record.

Latter, the Kenyan Wildlife Service itself corroborated that there is no 272 kg lion in they records. In fact, the heaviest lion recorded in Kenya, by scientists, was of 230 kg and this is corroborated by Dr Bruce Patterson in his book “The lions of Tsavo” of 2003.

So, there is no 272 kg lion in Kenya. Sadly, many modern books still quote him using Nowell & Jackson (1996) as reference. Others, like the lion expert Dr Yamaguchi don’t even accept this record and quotes the giant 260 kg Etosha male as the true record lion.

[guategojira]

I published this commentary in another forum. I will like to share it with all of you too.

Dead is never the solution:

The lion (Panthera leo) is one of the most charismatic of the land mammals. He is very deep in our minds, most than other animals, because we evolved with them. Lions and humans are tied in a form that can’t be comparable with other animal. Both rise in Africa, both evolved with the same prey and the same competitors. Lions and humans travel from Africa to Europe in the same time (Cromerian era) and it was the first animal admired (not yet worshiped) by earlier humans. Cave paints show how they lived, from the eyes of these first humans, but it was until the history time (Egypt) that humans worship them. Interestingly, the mysticism that we create over them NEVER saves them from the hunt.

I recently buy the book “The story of Asia’s lions” from Divyabhanusinh (2006), and there is a great chapter about how evolved the relation between humans and lions. The point is that ALL human populations had hunted lions in greater number than lion had hunted men.

Humans had been the only real treat for lions since the beginning and the relation between these two species had not changed and seems that it will not.

According with official data, the population of African lions is about 35,000 animals, but the great bulk of them live in the East and Southern African region. Just a few countries like Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, have populations over 1,000 specimens, while all the other countries have populations much more smaller. The lions in the West of Africa are the most endangered, with less than 250 specimens, they are even worse than the Indian lions or the Amur tigers! Let’s take in count that this population, together with the Indian lions, are a relic of an ancient subspecies that lived from Greece, north Africa, passing to Babylon, Persia and up to India (some dispute this last place, it will be discussed latter).

Indian lions, despite been highly inbreed and with a more or less stability of habitat and prey, are now a pretty well managed population, with over 411 specimens according with the last census of 2010. There are plans to relocate some of them into the Kuno region, but even with the order of the high Court of India, it seems that this is not going to happen, not in a near future, at least.

According with an interview with Dr Craig Packer, he predicted that in a near future, there will be only three places where lions would live:
1. The Kenya-Tanzania region: The Masai Mara, with the Serengeti and probably the Selous reserve.
2. The great Okavango region: surrounded by a desert, is well protected from the human intervention.
3. The Kruger National Park: protected with a large fence, it is like a huge “Jurassic Park” that if it is well managed, could be the last stand for the lion in the south.

The proposal of the lion farms is a controversial solution or could be also the worst solution ever stated. The premise is that as crocodiles or like domestic (specifically created for human consume, please take this in count), people could rise lions like cattle, feed them, use them as a show and later, when they are large-fat-useless, they could be used for the “fun” of the hunt. From my point of view, this is DISGUSTING AND NAUSEATING.

Humans had dignified themselves so much that had forgotten that God (if you believe in him, Evolution if not) had created every single creature with its own dignity and humans are like they caretaker. We can use animals, that is true, but we most dispose of them with dignity and with sense. But, where is the “sense” or the “dignity” in raising an animal just to kill it for fun???

Yes, money is the principal way, but how many times we most learned that money is not the solution for the world? The terrible dispersion of the wealth is the real problem, with the great capitalist piling all the money and the proletariat living with the crumbs. And check this out, the Communist countries ARE DOING THE SAME THING TOO!!! Hippocrates, this is they true, Capitalism or Communism, is the same sh……

Well, returning to the point, this hunting known as “Canned” lions is just a business of rich people that leave nothing to the communities around. Yes, they pay the taxes, yes they could be good citizens, but damn, Nazis in Germany were also good citizens, even when they were the pure evil!!!

Why people just respect this animals and they habitat and learn to earn money with tourism??? Check the model of East Africa at Masai Mara-Tanzania, there is no hunting there, and this are one of the places that are practically safe for the future. Even the great Dr Valmik Thapar say that India should learn from Kenya and Tanzania, that this is the best form to save tigers.

What South Africa has done is a bad move and a terrible solution. I am 100% sure that the hunting problem will be NOT resolved with the canned lions, with time, the same hunter sill say “hey, do you want the strength of a lion? Kill the wild ones, they are over “there””. Check this webpage:
endtrophyhuntingnow.com/2014/03/13/global-march-on-15th-march-against-canned-lion-hunting/
Check the smile of these monsters with them dead lions. Do you think that this is the solution for lion conservation???

The conservation of wild animals is possible, Kenya and Tanzania shows this. What South Africa is doing is a stupidity and take in count that no, many if not ALL the canned lion’ bones, are now send to Asia to be sale like tiger bones!!! The conservation most be based in the free of the wild animals to live in them habitat, population polities must be created in the countries with overpopulation, like India, with education and support for the people.

Lions and humans have born in the same cauldron of Africa, they and us are more related than we think, why we could just stop killing them and treat them for what they are: a wonderful gift of nature?

[blaze]

guategojira, will you include the 280kg (253kg estimated empty belly) lion weighted by the Timbavati Leopard Project in your charts? I also see that you don't include the 260kg (240kg estimated empty belly) etosha male.

[guategojira]

Blaze, my tables are relative old right now, the lion of Timbavati was not confirmed by me, but by other posters. Still, this record is from South Africa, and I have not made the new tables from that area yet, and at the time that my first tables were made, this record doesn't exist yet. Still, I found strange the estimation of exactly "253 kg", I mean, it is impossible to know the "exact" amount of food, round numbers are preferable, for that reason I think that a round number of c.250 kg is more reliable, as it mean that the lion gorge itself with c.30 kg of meat, which seems normal in large lions. Schaller (1972) reported a lion that eat 33 kg in one meal, despite the fact that he had already an unknown amount of food in its belly from a previous meal.

About the lion of 260 kg (240 kg empty) from Etosha, it is already included in my old tables. Check the section of Namibia, there it is. It is also a particular section about its measurements, corroborated by Dr Hu Berry, and even have a picture.

So, in conclusion, I would include the lion of Timbavati at c.250 kg, but the lion of Etosha at c.240 kg is already in my tables.

[blaze]

I'm probably looking at the wrong tables, I'm not seeing a Namibia section haha. Yes, I can agree with 250kg for the Timbavati male.

[Vodmeister]

Ecological Change, Group Territoriality, and Population Dynamics in Serengeti Lions
Craig Packer, Ray Hilborn, Anna Mosser, Bernard Kissui, Markus Borner, Grant Hopcraft, John Wilmshurst, Simon Mduma, Anthony R. E. Sinclair

ABSTRACT
Territorial behavior is expected to buffer populations against short-term environmental perturbations, but we have found that group living in African lions causes a complex response to long-term ecological change. Despite numerous gradual changes in prey availability and vegetative cover, regional populations of Serengeti lions remained stable for 10- to 20-year periods and only shifted to new equilibria in sudden leaps. Although gradually improving environmental conditions provided sufficient resources to permit the subdivision of preexisting territories, regional lion populations did not expand until short-term conditions supplied enough prey to generate large cohorts of surviving young. The results of a simulation model show that the observed pattern of “saltatory equilibria” results from the lions' grouping behavior.

REPORT

To test the effects of ecological changes on population dynamics (1–3), we rely on long-term records available from the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania (4). Lions in a 2,000 km2 area of the Serengeti have been studied continuously since 1966 (5). “Woodlands” prides reside in regions dominated by Acacia and Commiphora trees, with resident herds of hartebeest, topi, and buffalo. “Plains” prides occupy grasslands consisting primarily of Sporobolus, Themeda, Pennisetum, and Cynodon spp., with low densities of resident warthog and Grant's gazelle. Large numbers of migratory wildebeest, zebra, and Thompson's gazelle move through both habitats in response to seasonal rainfall patterns each year. Lion prides consist of 1 to 18 adult females, their dependent offspring, and a resident coalition of 1 to 9 males. Females defend joint territories, and larger prides dominate smaller ones (6, 7). As a result, prides of ≤2 females suffer very low reproductive success; prides of >10 females also fare poorly because of high levels of within-group competition (5, 8). Prides persist for generations, and new prides consist of related females that disperse together from preexisting prides (9). Lion territory size varies with overall food availability (10) but not with the number of females in the pride (11), and a pride territory must also contain permanent water and adequate denning sites (5, 12).

Population stasis and transition. To breed successfully, female lions must have sufficient companions to defend adequate food, water, and denning sites. Thus, an expanding food supply can only cause lion populations to grow when preexisting prides can split to form descendant prides that are large enough to establish themselves successfully. Population size should therefore increase as a direct function of the number of breeding groups in the population. The month-by-month change in population size between the 1960s and 2002 was highly correlated with the corresponding change in the number of prides in that habitat, regardless of whether we defined a pride as containing a minimum of two, three, or four adult females (and whether females were defined as “adults” after reaching 2, 3, or 4 years of age). However, the best statistical fit defined prides as groups containing a minimum of four females of at least 2 years of age (13), the age at which young females first participate in territorial defense (14).

Figure 1 - A and B, shows the monthly population sizes in each study area. Totals fluctuated slightly from month to month; but at a broad time scale, each population showed long periods of stasis ended by a sudden transition to a new equilibrium (15), and each change point was associated with a specific ecological change in that habitat. Figure 1C shows the population sizes of the major Serengeti herbivore species over the past 40 years. Wildebeest and buffalo numbers increased dramatically from the early 1960s until the late 1970s because of their release from rinderpest infection in 1963 (4). This was by far the most substantial change in prey abundance over the entire study period, and the lion population showed a clear increase over this same span [also see (16)]. Most striking, however, is that the woodlands lion population suddenly increased to a new equilibrium in 1973. The plains lions were not monitored between 1969 and 1974, so the precise timing and tempo of its increase are not known.

FIG 1.0
Lion population sizes each month: (A) woodlands, (B) plains. Horizontal lines indicate periods where population sizes were statistically homogeneous but different from adjacent periods. Blue lines include all individuals; black lines indicate lions ≥2 years. Diamonds designate change points. Pale green blocks highlight times when the populations were below local equilibrium density; dark green lines demarcate years within these periods with favorable rainfall. Red line shows the CDV die-off in 1994. (C) Serengeti herbivore population sizes. Vertical bars show SE. Green box highlights recovery from rinderpest; brown box highlights drought-related die-off in the wildebeest.


Lions enjoy higher feeding success in areas with greater vegetative cover (17), and each Serengeti habitat has undergone a large-scale increase in cover in the past 20 years. The grazing wildebeest herds remove vast quantities of grass that would fuel wildfires if left to senesce, and the enormous increase in wildebeest numbers led to a striking decrease in grassfires that, in turn, stimulated a regeneration of the Serengeti woodlands during the 1980s (Fig. 2). In November 1983, the woodlands lion population suddenly increased to a new plateau after several years of unprecedented growth of woody vegetation (Fig. 1A). The wildebeest population declined in 1994 (as a result of severe drought); the migration “skipped” the intermediate grass plains in 1995, enabling the tallest species in this community to dominate, and this pattern persisted for the following 5 to 6 years (Fig. 3). The tall grass provided improved cover for the plains lions, and the plains population suddenly increased in February 1997 after remaining at a persistent equilibrium since at least 1975.

FIG 2.0

Wildebeest, fire, and the regeneration of woody vegetation in the Serengeti woodlands. (A) The extent of wildfire is inversely related to the size of the wildebeest population. (B) Wildfire reached a low point in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (C) Population growth rates of acacias in the Serengeti woodlands as measured from fixed-point photography; woodland recovery peaked in the early 1980s. Green band indicates time period when the woodlands lions experienced the greatest increase in prey accessibility.


FIG 3.0

Long-term changes in grass height. (A) Grasslands map for the Serengeti plains. (B) Bar graphs indicate percentage of each grass type along the three transects in (A). The extent of tall grass has increased since 1994 (P < 0.01).


The woodland lion population dropped significantly in 1994 because of the canine distemper virus (CDV) epizootic that killed approximately one-third of the Serengeti lions (18). Although the die-off caused the lions to drop well below their equilibrium density, the population remained relatively constant for 5 years until suddenly returning to its previous plateau in May 1999.

Determinants of population change. The irruption of the herbivores, the regeneration of the woodlands, and the expansion of the tall grass plains were all processes that continued over several years, yet the lion populations always reached a new equilibrium in a single year. Similarly, the woodland population recovered suddenly but not until 5 years after the CDV outbreak. What determined the precise timing of these changes? The migratory patterns of the dominant herbivores (wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle) are primarily driven by seasonal rains in the Serengeti, and all of the sudden changes in lion population size coincided with years of unusual rainfall: 1973 was the first in a series of unusually “wet” dry seasons [which attracted the migratory herds to the woodlands study area (16)], 1983 and 1999 were followed by the two driest wet seasons in more than 40 years, and the increase in the plains population occurred during the extreme El Niño rainfalls of 1997–1998, which were the heaviest since 1962. (Migrant herbivores spend less time on the plains in “dry” wet seasons and more time on the plains in “wet” wet seasons.)

Thus, the background of long-term change in prey availability is overlain with a stochastic year-to-year pattern of prey distribution, and the first “good year” permitted rapid recruitment in the lion population. Across all significant population increases, the primary demographic response was increased cub survival (P < 0.01) rather than larger litter size or shorter interbirth intervals. All the population “leaps” involved successful reproduction in an exceptional number of prides. Five of six woodlands prides successfully raised cohorts of cubs in 1973 and 1983 (four of six was the prior record) and six of seven in 1999. There had never been more than six successful prides in any single year on the plains until 1997, when 11 of 12 prides successfully fledged offspring.

Our data clearly reveal the impact of the wildebeest on the Serengeti lions. Buffalo and gazelle both returned to 1960s levels by 2002 (Fig. 1C) without a concomitant decline in lion numbers, whereas the wildebeest population has remained at about 1.2 million for the past 25 years. The wildebeest were also responsible for two indirect effects on the lions. Increased levels of grazing led to extensive regeneration of woody vegetation, permitting an increase in the woodlands lion population, whereas a temporary decline in the wildebeest population increased the average height of grasses in the intermediate grass community, enabling an expansion of the lion population on the plains. The first significant improvement in local wildebeest abundance during a period of persistent ecological change also permits the simultaneous establishment of viable new prides (with ≥4 females), thus triggering the sudden increase of the population as a whole (13). In contrast, the herbivore community in the nearby Ngorongoro Crater is nonmigratory, and the Crater lion population fell to one-eighth of its local equilibrium density after a disease outbreak in 1962 (19) but subsequently showed a continuous period of exponential growth, doubling every 4 years for 12 years (20).

Impact of social structure. To evaluate the importance of group living on population changes in the Serengeti, we developed a detailed simulation model that incorporated long-term data on cub productivity, pride splitting, and adult survival as functions of annual rainfall, pride size, and dispersal status. We modeled the impact of large-scale ecological change as an increase in the number of potential territories in each study area (the magnitude being set by the observed change in equilibrial population size); rainfall followed the observed sequence over the past 40 years, and the simulated population suffered the observed level of disease mortality in 1994. Pride formation was a stochastic process that depended on the number of available territories, the size of the maternal pride, and cub recruitment. Key parameters were varied first to mimic an asocial species. In this initial case, all offspring dispersed and females were solitary (thus the model was deterministic rather than stochastic). In the second scenario, lions lived in stochastically created prides and new prides were only viable if they contained ≥4 females, but there was no within-group density dependence: Cubs in large prides had similar mortality as those in medium-sized prides. The final model imposed both a threshold minimum viable pride size and the observed levels of cub mortality in excessively large prides.

In a solitary species, gradual changes in the environment in the Serengeti woodlands produce a continuous response in adult population size (Fig. 4A), because females can be added one at a time as the number of potential territories increases. In a social species with a threshold minimum group size but lacking within-group density dependence, adult population growth is less continuous, but the shifts between equilibria are still gradual because daughters can always be added to preexisting prides (Fig. 4B). With both a threshold minimum pride size and within-group density dependence, however, adult population growth is abrupt, and the model often generates the kind of saltatory equilibrium observed in the empirical data (Fig. 4, C and D). With an upper limit on pride size, moderate-sized prides require exceptional circumstances to rear large cohorts of daughters, and this is the only scenario that accurately predicts a delayed (but abrupt) recovery from the 1994 CDV outbreak (see also figs. S1 and S2).

FIG 4.0

Number of adult females predicted by simulation models of the Serengeti woodlands population under three different scenarios. (A) Each territory is occupied by only one adult female; all adult daughters disperse. (B) Lions live in prides that must contain ≥3 females to be viable, but cubs do not suffer higher mortality in excessively large prides. (C) Prides must be ≥3 females to be viable, and cubs born in large prides suffer higher mortality. (B) and (C) illustrate representative runs of the stochastic models (see figs. S1 and S2 for output from 10 runs of each model), whereas the model shown in (A) is deterministic. (D) Frequency distribution of annual changes in female population size averaged over 100 runs of model (B), open bars, and model (C), black bars. Model (B) generated an average of only 1.08 annual population changes larger than 30% (because of the disease epidemic), whereas model (C) correctly predicted an average of 4.08 such changes (the epidemic plus three upward shifts).

www.sciencemag.org/content/307/5708/390.full

[Vodmeister]

Lion Pride vs Elephant




lionprides.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/elephant-kill-at-savute-safari-lodge/

[creature386]

Jul 24, 2017 5:30:46 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations

[Infinity Blade]

This is an old but I guess in any case useful paper on prey capture in lions. The speed figure for some reason sounds more believable than a recent one (where speed was not much slower than that which cheetahs achieved).

umdberg.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/45334477/canjzoollions.pdf

[Infinity Blade]

Some old magazine article, I think, on the the maneless lions of Tsavo.

cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/downloads/maneless_in_tsavo.pdf

[Infinity Blade]

Spatially explicit density and its determinants for Asiatic lions in the Gir forests

Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) are an icon of conservation success, yet their status is inferred from total counts that cannot account for detection bias and double counts. With an effort of 4,797 km in 725 km² of western Gir Protected Area, India, we used polygon search based spatially explicit capture recapture framework to estimate lion density. Using vibrissae patterns and permanent body marks we identified 67 lions from 368 lion sightings. We conducted distance sampling on 35 transects with an effort of 101.5 km to estimate spatial prey density using generalized additive modeling (GAM). Subsequently, we modeled lion spatial density with prey, habitat characteristics, anthropogenic factors and distance to baiting sites. Lion density (>1-year-old lions) was estimated at 8.53 (SE 1.05) /100 km² with lionesses having smaller movement parameter (σ = 2.55 km; SE 0.12) compared to males (σ = 5.32 km; SE 0.33). Detection corrected sex ratio (female:male lions) was 1.14 (SE 0.02). Chital (Axis axis) was the most abundant ungulate with a density of 63.29 (SE 10.14) as determined by conventional distance sampling (CDS) and 58.17 (SE 22.17)/km2 with density surface modeling (DSM), followed by sambar (Rusa unicolor) at 3.84 (SE 1.07) and 4.73 (SE 1.48)/km² estimated by CDS and DSM respectively. Spatial lion density was best explained by proximity to baiting sites and flat valley habitat but not as much by prey density. We demonstrate a scientifically robust approach to estimate lion abundance, that due to its spatial context, can be useful for management of habitat and human-lion interface. We recommend this method for lion population assessment across their range. High lion densities in western Gir were correlated with baiting. The management practice of attracting lions for tourism can perturb natural lion densities, disrupt behavior, lion social dynamics and have detrimental effects on local prey densities.

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228374

[Infinity Blade]

Prey size variation based on the abundance of large prey (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2017).

[Infinity Blade]

Amorós et al. (2020)

As mentioned previously by Moleón et al. (2015), scavenging by lions and spotted hyaenas on carcasses other than their kills was frequent in our study areas, particularly as carcass size increased. High scavenging rates have also frequently been observed for these species in other locations (Pereira et al. 2014). In HiP, lions and spotted hyaenas used the carcasses, in terms of consumed biomass, relative to their abundance. Hence, there was no asymmetry in the exploitation of this food resource. Moreover, lions and hyaenas in general showed similar scavenging patterns when both species were in sympatry, resulting in a high trophic overlap. The principal differences were: 1) the anecdotal use of small carcasses by lions; and 2) the greater selectivity of large carcasses in the case of lions. These results suggest high levels of exploitative competition regarding scavenging behavior (Begon et al. 2006), but with some advantages for lions. Also, they are consistent with the tendency of lions to kill larger prey than hyaenas (Périquet et al. 2015a).

Small and medium carcasses in HiP were more exclusively used by hyaenas, a result likely related to the higher abundance of hyaenas (i.e. higher encounter probability) and the fact that these carcasses were normally entirely consumed (i.e. no food left for lions).

Périquet et al. (2014)

Three studies report the effect of the presence of an adult male lion on the outcome of encounters at carcasses. They all conclude that if at least one male lion is present, hyaenas will almost always lose their kill and never access a lion kill. In the Ngorongoro Crater, Honer et al. (2005) reported that when a male lion was present at a carcass, hyaenas never attempted to acquire it before the male left. Cooper (1991) showed that in the Savuti region, when hyaenas were chased away by a male lion they usually left the scene, whereas if only lionesses and cubs were present, they remained in the vicinity of the carcass. Elliott & McTaggart-Cowan (1978) report that male lions never abandoned their kills to hyaenas whereas lionesses sometimes did. Furthermore, prides with males obtain between 10 and 40% of their food from hyaenas compared with 7% for a pride of females. Hyaenas seem to fear male lions to a much greater extent than lionesses, perhaps because male lions are a higher cause of hyaena mortality than lionesses (see Section IV.3).

However, we were not able to detect any pattern suggesting an effect of lion group size (clan, pride, foraging group) or adult sex ratio in lions on kleptoparasitism intensity. This might be due to the very limited number of locations where values for these parameters were available (N < 6). Based on these results, it appears that no species is consistently dominant in food-related interactions, with the outcome of such interactions rather depending on the ecosystem in which they occur. If an adult male lion is present, then hyaenas are subordinate. However, if the lion group is composed only of lionesses and sub-adults, then the numerically dominant species wins the encounter. In some areas, one species may benefit more from the other (Kruuk, 1972; Schaller, 1972; Cooper, 1991; Honer et al., 2002), while in others, neither has a clear advantage (Mills, 1990).

Lions were seen to kill hyaenas in 10 studies (six locations, Table 6). Seven of them report lions, particularly adult males, as a primary cause of mortality for both adult and juvenile hyaenas (Kruuk, 1972; Watts & Holekamp, 2008, 2009). Most predation events on adult hyaenas occur at kills during fights with lions. There is little information on hyaenas killing lions, although a cub was killed in the Serengeti (Schaller, 1972) and an old lioness in Hwange NP (Loveridge et al., 2010a). Lionesses are also sometimes severely injured in fights with hyaenas. Although we did not find any correlation between the intensity of direct killing of hyaenas by lions and prey abundance (prey total density: ρ = −0.31, P = 0.56, prey total biomass: ρ = 0, P = 1), this could be due to the very limited sample size (six locations).

For medium-, large- and very-large-sized prey, juveniles are much smaller than adults and easier to kill, providing another opportunity for niche partitioning between hyaenas and lions. We found that the proportion of juveniles in the hyaena diet was significantly higher than in the lion diet (χ² = 98.75, d.f. = 1, P < 0.0001, Table 7), in agreement with results of Mills (1984a) in the Kalahari desert, Kruuk (1972) in the much richer Serengeti ecosystem and Mills & Biggs (1993) in Kruger NP. By preying on different age classes within the same prey species, lions and hyaenas will reduce their niche overlap.

Both hyaena and lion population densities are linked to that of their prey and thus are positively correlated with each other (Hayward et al., 2007c). Their diets are very similar (Hayward, 2006) but there are suggestions that they may reduce their niche overlap, most probably by preying on different prey size (species or age classes). Figure 5 presents a summary of our findings. When prey abundance is high, large foraging groups of hyaenas could have a negative impact on lion pride size. Conversely, at low prey density, hyaena pressure on lion group size would be released allowing lions to form bigger groups and to outcompete hyaenas at carcasses, potentially leading to a reduced abundance of hyaenas.

This is corroborated by earlier observations of lions and hyenas (Hunter, 2006)



Visual comparison of hindlimb morphology (image source).

[Infinity Blade]

Apparently this happened a while back. Must have been one epic conflict.

Lions, Hyenas Battle in Ethiopia
Tuesday, April 20, 1999

By The Associated Press
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Lions and hyenas have waged a fierce weeklong fight in Ethiopia's Gobele wilderness, and the bloody battle's cause remains a mystery, the Ethiopian News Agency reported Tuesday.

``If drought had been the cause, the beasts would have attacked neighboring villages rather than butcher each other,'' said Kemal Bedri of the Harrar State Agricultural Bureau.

The animals might have fought over some unknown vendetta, he said.

The lions succeeded in chasing away the hyenas after what policemen and local residents described as a ``ferocious battle,'' the agency reported.

At the end of the fighting, six lions and 35 hyenas lay dead in the semi-desert turf near the ancient walled city of Harrar, 220 miles east of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, the agency reported.

The news agency did not say when the fighting took place.

Although hyenas are better known as scavengers, picking at the remains of animals already killed, they often attack animals and humans in packs when provoked.

An unidentified villager told the news agency the hyenas spent their days hiding in caves, and came out at night to joust with the lions.


www.igorilla.com/gorilla/animal/1999/lions_and_hyenas_balttle_in_ethiopia.html

[bigcatsxpertz]

www.researchgate.net/publication/316154304_Focus_on_the_Lion_Panthera_leo FOCUS ON THE LION PANTHERA LEO 

---

Other than the Asian tiger, lions are the largest living cats and are the largest living African predator. Both the body size and appearance differ between environments as they are a result of a combination of the type of prey consumed and the inherent genetic variation of the population. The lack of genetic variation between lion populations is important, as the species is being forced into bottlenecks. Adult males from southern Africa have a mean body mass of 190-200 kg and females, 125-140 kg. The maximum recorded weight of males in the Kruger National Park was 225 kg and females, 152 kg. This is greater than the maximum weight of lion in East Africa where males were 180 kg and females, 120 kg. A record male of 272 kg was shot near Mt Kenya. In the Etosha National Park of Namibia males reach a mass of 260 kg and females, 165 kg Lion have the typical body profile of a cat with a powerful muscular body, short robust legs, enlarged paws and shoulders that project slightly above the line of the spine when walking. The tail is extremely long and serves as a means of balance when charging. It is more than half the length of the body including the head, and is ended by a black tuft of hair. The body is a uni-coloured dull, sandy-yellow or tawny-yellow on the upper parts and flanks, and a light yellow-white on the under parts and inner legs. The back and face of some individuals may turn golden-brown.

---