Talamati/Msutlu Pride

[Rui Ferreira]

(11-18-2024, 06:04 PM)KM600 Wrote: Just had a thought and I think it's best placed in here for now, given the two examples that I'm going to use. As I'm pretty sure most of us are aware that the chance significantly increases for there to be something wrong with a baby, whatever that may be, when women give birth late 30s compared to when they are younger. The exact scientific reasoning for this, I can't specify but was wondering if this could happen in lions too. Take Dzwihala and Khanya for example, if Khanya was confirmed to be sired from one of the matriarchs of Talamati Pride, well past her best years, compared to Dzwihala being sired by a much younger female, maybe this could be a reason why they turned out quite different. Ofcourse nothing is wrong with Khanya, he just lacks that robust size Dzwihala had. Perhaps there is something to this theory tho, would Khanya have become a bigger male if he was too sired by a younger female, with a better developed mane at this stage of his life or would it make little to no difference at all. Obviously a lot of that can come down to genetics too.

I think the best way to prove this theory would be by comparing litters of the same mothers with quite an age difference between them, which is both impossible, as it's not like we can just stack them next to each other to see the difference, and still wouldn't be 100% telling in how true it may be. Anyways, just a thought.

Interesting line of tought 
So I know its far from lions, but it could have the same principals or reasons for it to be but 
I own racing pidgeons, where theres a giant need for the animals to be elite not only health wise but genetic wise
And when dealing with the reproduction lote, I tend to see as the years go by that the quality of pidgeons "sired" ( I dont have a strong English vocabulary) by both females and males as the years go by tend to decline 
For example it would be alot more frequent that a female in her prime , lets say 6 years old would generate descendants who would win alot more prizes and throphies than their brothers and sisters ( from same father and Mother ) that were born when their Mother was 10/11... Years old 
Obviously its not a general rule and there could be some variations in different individuals, but most of the time the quality of descendants tend to decline as the years go by
One thing that I saw it helped with that decline was giving an young or in prime male to that female, and it seems to work quite well 
If we reverse roles there seems to be not that much of a differance 
My theory is that as the years go by the ability/strengh to generate individuals at their full genetic potential decline maybe due to quality of the reproductive organs of the female or maybe her overall health 
I know I AM almost comparing lions to pidgeons but biologic wise there could be a relation maybe Reply