Lions in West-Africa

[GrizzlyClaws]

(01-25-2019, 12:34 PM)Spalea Wrote:

(01-25-2019, 04:33 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:

(01-25-2019, 12:56 AM)Spalea Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 06:15 PM)Lycaon Wrote: I find it interesting that many people on this forum think west african lions look like gir lions. For me they look completely different from each other

They have common characteristics  (because they both live in dry environments) but they don't resemble each other. I don't know how to describe that but I find that the west african lions have clearly the mouth of African lions (better built).

Mostly because they belong to the same subspecies, hence in a similar environment they would expose to many common traits.

The West African lions genetically cluster with the historical lions from Southeast Europe/North Africa/West Asia, also the Gir lions.

Agree. "The same causes produce the same effects". We gave a term to this: "évolution parallèle" in french, parallel development or parallel evolution.
However, thousands of kilometers separate the west african lions from the Gir lions. This parallel evolution isn't whole ('), complete.

Th West African lions were ancestral to the Gir lions, so the Gir lions might still exhibit or retain some of their ancestral traits in some conditional situations; like the sparse mane, except the Gir lions are more deformed due the inbreeding.

The inter-subspecfic variation of the West African lion group is huge; from the sparse maned Gir lions to the long dark maned Barbary lions.

When the West African lions moved to the mountainous areas in North Africa, they did immediately evolve with the long dark mane and shaggy coat to resist the low temperature.

Also, the Gir lions might look like the West African lions from 110,000 years ago, while the modern West African lions have been continuously interbred with other African lion populations, so the divergent differences have already existed long time ago. Reply