The size of the Barbary lion

[GuateGojira]

(05-26-2022, 11:28 AM)BigLion39 Wrote: I have always wondered why captive lions look very different from wild lions. Their skulls in particular and their manes. Why is that?

About the manes, it is directly related with the climate and the care/feeding of the specimens. I can tell you that here in Guatemala there was a captive male lion in the La Aurora Zoo named "Leono" (like the Thundercats leader) and even in our tropical climate it developed an impresive mane, that animal was beautiful. Maybe also as they live in less stress (in the good zoos at least), they develop big manes too, is just a third posibility, but is only a guess.

Now, about the skull, we have two studies that focus on this, and although they showed this phenomenon, they do not provide a clear explanation about why this happens. In fact, it is weird that this phenomenon is not present at the same level in other Panthera species. Reply