Asiatic lions outside India

[BorneanTiger]

(06-10-2020, 11:04 PM)Ingonyama6 Wrote: Here are some accounts of Asian lions interacting and preying on pachyderms.

The Asian lion population in Iraq attacked and fed on domestic Indian elephants (Link  https://issuu.com/dr-normanalibassamkhalaf/docs/the_asiatic_or_persian_lion_in_pale) Page 7

*This image is copyright of its original author

Dr Nouman Khalaf was quoting Al-Jahiz, a legendary muslim zoologist and pioneer. When Jahiz wrote that Asian lions hunt domestic elephants was between the 7th and 8th century, when the two co-existed. 

First of all lets see the ranges and maps.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Range of the Asian Elephant. Credits to Wiki

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can clearly see, the two species definately co-existed at one time. Only their mass extermination stopped them from crossing paths anymore. I would also like to point out that wherever lions and pachyderms co-existed at any point, the lion has killed them on occasions. Lets take the cave lions of Europe for example. They hunted mammoths.
http://dl.booktolearn.com/ebooks2/science/biology/9780226780269_the_wild_cat_book_7731.pdf


What Al-Jahiz wrote is understandable. There are footages of lions hunting young elephants and expert accounts of them killing adults. 



Lions have been known to charge and pull down elephants, riders and all during lion hunts.

*This image is copyright of its original author

https://archive.org/stream/lionstigerscc00jardrich#page/110/mode/2up/

(06-11-2020, 01:07 AM)Ashutosh Wrote: How can someone living in 800AD report on interaction between Asiatic Elephants and Asiatic lions when the Syrian Elephant went extinct in 700BC?!?! 

They didn’t even share the same habitat for the most part. Syrian elephants were only restricted to mangroves and the coast whereas the lions were more in dry part of the middle East.

About the above post by @Ingonyama6 in the other page, strictly speaking, Al-Jahez said that Iraqi lions fed on domesticated Indian elephants (Elephas maximus indicus; hence imported, think of Hannibal Barca, the Phœnician general from Carthage (present-day Tunisia in North Africa) who had an Asian elephant), not wild Syrian or Middle Eastern elephants (Elephas maximus asurus). What he mentioned about wild elephants was that they could defend themselves, not necessarily that Middle Eastern lions fed on wild Middle Eastern elephants. Reply