ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - B - THE LION (Panthera leo)

[BorneanTiger]

(02-24-2020, 08:32 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(02-23-2020, 11:22 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: One might expect that animals living in hot, dry areas ought to be smaller than those in cooler areas with abundant vegetation, so how do lions manage to be huge in a region that is arid or semi-arid?

Very good question, and as we can see in the images, all those lions are very fat and well feed. A posible explanation is that those lions have more plasticity in they prey selection, been capable of split they prides in smaller groups to optimize the hunt. Other case is the one in Hobatere which is that those lions prey on domestic cattle but I think that is only in some ocasions, not all the time as they certainly have a fair wild prey base. I think that the diference with those lions from South Africa is that the figure of the lions in Namibia includes stomach content and those from South Africa (at least in the bigger sample of Smuts) are adjusted for stomach content.

So, overall, I think that the lions of South Africa are still the biggest.

But in the case of this lion that travelled about 1,300 km (807 miles) between Angola and Namibia in 2014, apparently it was all alone, so no need to share any food with a pride: https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/rar...data/32633

*This image is copyright of its original author

And, as I mentioned earlier, this was exactly the distance that was reportedly travelled by a Central Indian tiger between Tipeshwar Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra State and Telangana, in 5 months last year, setting a record for India at least: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50626744

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply