Why are lions social animals?

[Sully]

So I watched a documentary on why Lions are social animals. It was all based on Packer and his teams research on this subject. They observed 28 prides and had records on over 5000 lions and came to a conclusion. The documentary addressed the most popular theories and debunked them, I'll try and summarize what they said.

Hunting:

So, many people think lions are social so they can hunt more efficiently, but quite bluntly their success rate didn't increase from when hunting solo to in a group. And people also think Lions hunt in groups to take down big prey like buffalo and hippo's however the burden of sharing the meal outweighed hunting as a group to get it in the first place. In other words they would've been better hunting smaller prey for themselves. Another thing wrong with this theory is their table manners, if they were social for this reason surely they would peacefully share the food?

Raising Cubs:

Another common theory they debunked is raising cubs as a group. People think that the mothers actively share their milk between all of the cubs in the pride however Packers research showed mothers seem to only want to feed their own cubs and don't really like the other mothers cubs suckling them. The cubs wait until the mothers are asleep however to go over to any female and suckle, they are more like parasites to the females.

They also said that cubs don't get any added nutrition meaning they don't need to share in the first place.

Infanticide:

So another theory was that mothers team up along with males together to stop invaders killing their cubs, but that happens to every cat so why have lions evolved to be in groups?

Why lions are social animals:

Packer did an experiment with recorded lion roars and played them back to prides. This was the most fascinating part of the documentary. When it was a one on one meaning packer played one roar to one lion, there was no response. 2 on one on both  sides there was no response (packer played 2 roars and one roar to one lion and two lions) , but when the lions had an advantage of two, they roared back, for example when packer played 1 roar to 3 lions there was a response and when he played 3 roars to five lions there was a response, but when there were equal lions on both sides, no response, and when packer had an advantage of one or more, there was no response either. This means lions can count.

Basically:

Packer             Lion(s)
1 roar to             1  = no response
1 roar to             2  = no response
1 roar to             3  = response

Lions need an advantage of two to roar back.


They also researched where the most successful lions prides were, successful being defined by how many cubs raised. This revealed that the most successful lion prides were physically based around confluences. So they came to the conclusion that lions are not social because of how they live, but where they live. Confluences offer abundant prey and cover to raise cubs easier. They are thus social to protect this vital territory which has many perks for survival.

If you have any other theories please share.

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