Lions of Sabi Sands

[Timbavati]

(11-20-2020, 03:46 AM)BA0701 Wrote:

(11-19-2020, 09:03 PM)Potato Wrote:

(11-19-2020, 03:17 AM)Slayerd Wrote: I've got a question for everybody. Recently the Birmingham Young Male lion was names Osindile which means 'survivor' in Zulu. A worthy name for the young male who had to survive the Ross Males and his leg injury that nearly killed him. Down south, in Sabi Sands, the Nkuhuma Young Male also had to face his own hardships and had to survive. He was also forced to face dominant male lions and on occasion, had to fight them to survive. He lost his mother and partner and had to look after himself for almost a year. The stress led to him losing condition and his mane until he found the Styx Pride. He is also a true Survivor of the bush. Both Males have similar stories and are similar in age but in your opinion, who had a much harsher life they had to survive through?

I would definitely say BYM had more harsh life. I do not think at all Nkuchuma male had particularly harash life for a male lion, rather around standard one. What it comes to pointing out lions around who I would say had harash life then I would go with:

1. Belly Scar N'was - It is rather obvious that with such injury he has life must be/must have been harash, esspecially through out nomadic stage. 
2. Mhangeni 12 - Sub adults from which 2 lionesses had survived. Rather we all know the story of those going through constant hunger. Moreover one of them quite recently had very bad injury to her leg. She lost all the muscle on her leg and it looked like she might not survive much longer, but she fully recovered.
3. BIrmingham young male - He had very bad injury, from which many (great most?) believed he will never recover and with the pressure from Ross males he won't survive. 
 
Then honorable mentions:

1. Xikukutsu male - The male who carried rough injury, possibly gorged by buffalo after which he lost most of his mane which indicates also big loses of condition. Hopefully tho lions like him, in physical prime are very resistant and he made full recover. Why I did put him in list over is that he had back up in terms of food source in forms of his blood brother, Monwana and Avoca prides  and had no preasure on him from dominant males in the arena like BYM had. 
2. Mbiri males - They were forced into nomadic life while they very just 2 and half years old or somewhere just a bit above that, by the new dominant males in the pride (Thanda Impis). Moreover one of them was killed by the dominant males around Orpen Gate. That is very difficult start for a male lions and why I did not put them in list above is that they did surprisingly great for the position they were put into.
3. Tumbela males - Those guys clearly had very rough nomadic life, facing constant hunger and losing two brothers in that stage of their life. Why I did not put them in the list above is that they spent quite a lot of time with their natal pride. They definitelly did not had rough start. I do not know what really went wrong for them. At their age they should have been able to feed for themselfs especially since they were in quite big group which makes hunt easier. 


Why not Nkuchuma male even in the mentions list? First he had 3 years of easy life with natal pride. Then Avocas came. The were tolerating him tho for a couple of months before the put a preassure and when they did so, it hasn't been as rough as what Ross males did to Birmingham male.  He left pride at around 3,5 years old. Then he had few months of nomadic life in which he wasn't doing particularly bad. Then he linked up with Styx pride and his life became even easier. I would stay that is what in avarage wild lion gets from the life. 

@Potato Is Big Boy Mangheni one of the 12 you mentioned? I can think of few lions who had a rougher go of it that that buy did. An absolute tragedy tbh.

Exactly, Potato was referring to the same Big boy Mangheni and the other 11 Mangheni boys almost all of them suffered  mange that was so sad watching  Safari live on social media at Djuma Sabi Sands how this mange has been affecting them day by day. The good thing is that those warriors now don't suffer anymore. RIP Reply