Other male lion coalitions from Masai Mara

[DE_66]

(01-02-2022, 09:58 PM)BA0701 Wrote: Interesting history on Loonkito, the now 18 year old wild lion. I actually posted the incredibly brutal fight that is shown in this video, but at the time I was not aware of who the two males were. From my understanding a fight with the outsider male killed Loonkito's brother, and Loonkito finished the fight, in what is likely the most brutal lion fight I have seen. What a legend Loonkito is, however, as the video points out, there is a real downside to having a male with such longevity, and that is the harm inflicted on the gene pool, since he is now mating with his daughters and granddaughters.

A few questions and observations:
1.  This is an amazing encounter.  How often do lions fight to death in a one vs one battle?  I'm sure it happens more than we know, but most lions that die in battle are outnumbered.
2.  The real badass was the intruder.  He mortally wounded one lion, then immediately fought another to a standstill?!!!???  I wonder if he survived.  Loonkito's face didn't look as bad as a I expected.  How did he not lose an eye?!?
3.  Loonkito's teeth are in much better shape than you would expect for such an old lion.   I've seen 10-year-old lions with worse K9s.
4.  The one lion they showed mating wasn't that old so he must have been a son or grandson.  Is he not kicking them out?  There had to have been quite a few over the years.  Bro/sis mating is actually much, much worse than father/daughter or grandfather/granddaughter.  Inbreeding is bad for the gene pool, but I know a lot of dog breeders in the US do it.  They call it line breeding.  Especially during the creation of a new breed, they keep breeding back to the best specimen.  It happens in horse breeding as well, but not nearly as closely related.  He has good genes if he's survived this long and is still in good shape for his age.  I just hope he's not passing on some small defect that will compound and catch up to them down the line à la Ngorongoro Crater Lions. Reply