Lions of Tanzania (Serengeti, Ngorongoro and others)

[Pckts]

?NEW LION ALERT?

We‘re happy to introduce to you the currently biggest coalition of the Ngorongoro Crater. The 5 Lake Quintet males were born into the Lake pride in 2013 (dates could vary), given the time-wise context there’s a good probability that they were sired by the 4 members strong Gene-flow coalition, made up of Eugene, Genius, Gen and Genovo (we hope to get further confirmation/clarification here). Since 1993 this had been the first time that new unknown males entered and established themselves in the Crater which hugely contributed to a refreshing genepool.

Using their superior numbers as an advantage the Lake Quintet males - officially referred to as LK115, LK116, LK117, LK120 and LK121 - quickly gained dominance in the Crater that ultimately led to the takeovers of the Lakette pride and the Munge Mabinti pride, the currently biggest pride in the Crater with approximately 17 members. They also ousted the well-known males Kijana (another not Crater-related male) and Hjalmar (a Munge pride born male) and took over the Lagunita pride. There’s a good possibility that Kijana was killed in the process sometime in 2017.

The Ngorongoro Crater is currently home of 65-75 lions with eight prides in total. While some of the successive young males left the Crater to frequently push into the Ndutu Conservation area (this had been witnessed with the Munge males and the Lagunita males) - possibly also to avoid the competition with the resident Crater pride males - the majority of the prides is shared between the two major coalitions, Lake Quintet and the Lake Trio. In the following days and weeks we will post a few more recent pictures of the Lake Quintet males who - just as it has been witnessed a good amount of times with Crater male lions - seem to mature very fast with developing very huge and dark manes at an already fairly young age.

Image credits: @roman_wildlife_foundation

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