Lion Predation

[TheLioness]

Quote:Anybody who has seen a documentary "knows" that lions hunt cooperatively to bring down prey. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have told the lions this. Indeed, for many years field biologists who study lions have realized that cooperative hunting is an illusion. The naturalist George Shaller figured this out in the late 1960s with the first quantitative field study. He found that a single lion has a success rate of 15% on a given hunt—or about one successful hunt for every seven. Two lions have a success of 29%, which is 3% LESS successful than if the two lions with 15% individual success hunted by themselves (32.2%). Three lions get 27%, or 2% less than two lions. Four, five and six lions get 32% - meaning that they are (finally) as successful as sending two lions out by themselves. There is clearly no statistical value to hunting in groups.
More recent studies by Craig Packer and others have looked at higher order statistics—the variance, or the size of the animal. It all comes out the same way. If indeed lions hunt in some cooperative and strategic way, then they get no benefit from it statistically. So, how come the Discovery Channel says they are cooperative? Partly it is because these figures are buried in Appendix B of Shaller's book, or in dense academic papers. Mostly it is because the story of cooperative strategy in hunting is so endearing to people. Especially to film editors, which means we are destined to seeing cooperation in every nature documentary. The cases where the hunting fails due to lack of cooperation end up on the cutting room floor.
Watching lions hunt, the trends are quite obvious. The primary reason that groups of lions are no more effective than two by themselves is that typically only two lions do the actual hunting. They all make a show of hunting, but in the cases I watched, in several different prides, there were always a couple females that were the most aggressive and took the lead. The others hang back for the hard part then rush up at the end after the worst danger is over. Their primary goal is to be at the kill early so they can eat, not to actually help. Field studies have confirmed that lions do not seem to keep track of this and punish slackers.

Quote:Buffalo are quite impressive animals. They are very brave and will not hesitate to attack lions when they can. When one buffalo has been knocked down by lions, the buffalo herd will almost always attempt a rescue—charging in to drive the lions away. This succeeds a large fraction of the time—even if the buffalo has been down for 30 minutes. Of course if the buffalo herd surrounded the lions when they were sleeping and just methodically trampled them to death, their whole problem would be over, but there is no buffalo general to lead them in such an endeavor. Alternatively, if the buffalo had a bit more skill at rounding up the herd, they'd never leave some separated which is what the lions look for.

We know single lions can take down buffalo alone, so no they don't really need a pride to hunt them. I'm just stating I believe it would be more common for lions to make a buffalo kill if the herd wouldn't defend. Most I'd say 7/10 or more videos and accounts we see with kills, the herd does defend. This seems to me to be the main factor imo. Of course there is other factors, some lions can't kill a buffalo even when its by itself, and sometimes they can. Reply