Lions of Sabi Sands

[Duco Ndona]

In a large coalition, food is just always going to be an issue. They both may hunt together the first time. But the strong will eat fist. And as there is so little food available for such a large group. We are not going to just see scraps over who gets to eat first. But scraps about who gets to eat at all and these can be very brutal with survival on the line. 
And once they had their fill, the stronger members are in a food coma. Its only going to be the weaker members that are forced to go on a hunt a second time to get their fill. 
After a while, this weaker subgroup is going to realize that they can get much better rewards if they just hunt on their own in the first place and there is very little benefit for them to stick around. There is no loyalty keeping a group together when the bottom half is severely disadvantaged like that. There is no point in seeking safety in numbers, when your own group becomes a bigger threat to your survival than the outside world. 

Its also important to note that coalitions collapse in zoos and such as well. So sometimes it may also just be the social structure in the group itself that degrades over time. Rather than something to fight over. 

And yes, animals are just as emotional as humans are. 
Emotions are nothing more than expressions of our deeper instincts. Not some dumb party trick we evolved for artists like Shakespeare to write sappy plays about. 
Getting food and sex gives us a instinctual happy feeling so we get some more. Being beaten up or seeing our kids die gives us a instinctual bad feeling. So we try to avoid that. Thats all there is to it. 

Granted, a lion may have different emotions as they live vastly different lives. They lack for example the human instinctual disgust towards cheating as their society is build around the instinct of multiple lionesses taking care of the same males cubs with the whole pride and allolactating. And they clearly form a stronger bond between members of the own sex rather than opposites one like we do. 
But basic emotions, like happiness and grief are essential for an instinctual driven animal to function. Otherwise an animal would be indifferent to its own suffering and not take any steps towards survival. Reply