Ethiopian Mountain Lion

[BorneanTiger]

Ethiopian lions appear to belong to no single subspecies. According to the 2017 report of the Cat Specialist Group (Pages 71–73: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y), there are 2 subspecies of lions: Panthera leo leo (for lions in Asia and the northern half of Africa) and Panthera leo melanochaita (for lions in the southern half of Africa), however, Ethiopia appears to be where these 2 subspecies overlap, which would mean that Ethiopian lions (formerly Panthera leo roosevelti or Felis leo roosevelti, in honor of US President Theodore Roosevelt: https://archive.org/stream/smithsonianmi...3/mode/2up) are neither purely Panthera leo leo nor Panthera leo melanochaita, but a mixture (Panthera leo leo × Panthera leo melanochaita), and the Cat Specialist Group put a question mark over this part of Africa in the diagram on Page 72: 
   

This is not the first time that the genetic condition of Ethiopian lions has come to attention. In 2013, Bruche et al. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...012-0668-5) had done a genetic test on lions at Addis Abeba Zoo, and found them to be different to other lions. Reply