The Mighty Mapogos

[Mapokser]

(04-28-2022, 03:03 AM)Ivo Gama Wrote: Hello. I'm new in the forum. Can someone help me? I want to know the fights Makhulu Mapogo had with other male lions 1 vs 1? Does anyone knows? Greetings from Portugal ??

Welcome.

It's very rare for lions to fight lions from other coalitions 1v1, the risks are huge. However in early 2006 when the Mapogos were looking for their first territory, Makhulu ( still in his prime ) followed the prime dominant male of the Othawa Pride, Nhlanguleni and got into a fierce fight with him. He left with many scratches and bleeding a lot from his mouth, also one of his lower canine teeth was snapped in half.

Defeated, Nhlanguleni was seen limping badly and had a terrible wound on his face where Makhulu's canine was still hanging. He was later seen again I think two times before disappearing. The Mapogos conquered the territory.

There's also a series of confrontation with the 2 KNP Males in 2012 after Mr.T's death, when the elders Makhulu and Pretty Boy became nomads. They had many clashes with the big and prime KNP Freddy and Limper, and after one confrontation, Makhulu was seen with injuries, while the KNP males were apparently unhurt. Howerver not very long Limper's situation got worse and worse until his eventually died, so since after the clash only Makhulu had injuries ( PB was fine ) people especulate that Limper died from wounds inflicted by Makhulu in a 1v1.

IMO it's clear that in the middle of the 2 coalitions chasing each other, Makhulu had a confrontation with Limper who got some minor injuries from it ( report says that both KNP had seemigly no injuries/were fine so Makhulu can't have had given him serious injuries unless the ranger missed it somehow ) the injuries very likely infected and he later died from it.

You can read the reports of Makhulu vs Nhlanguleni here: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-the-mig...s?page=141

For the confrontations with the KNP males, there're a lot of reports and talks about it, so you'll have to make your own research.

These are the 1v1, but you can also give a look at other "fair fights" or fights while outnumbered that Makhulu had.

In 2011 with only 3 old Mapogos left, 3-4 of the huge Matimbas who were expanding at the time met the Mapogos at the borders of their territory and they had a huge fight, which ended up with the Matimbas not making new attempts of invading the Mapogo's territory, you can read a bit more about it here: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-the-mig...os?page=22

And also in 2012, the 4 remaining Selatis caught PB alone and when it seemed that he was done for, Makhulu and Mr.T showed up and fought off the intruders. PB survived but left the fight in a very bad shape and when the Selatis returned 1 month later, they killed Mr.T.

Now, apart from fighting rival males, lions normally fight their coalition partners for mating rights and sometimes for food too, and the Mapogos were known for fighting each other a lot and as the dominant male, we know that Makhulu dominated his brothers in such disputes, and even as late as 2009 ( when he was 11 ) rangers said that he was the first dominant one, followed by Dreadlocks.

We have one of these instances registered with pictures, in September 2009 Makhulu was with a lioness when he was attacked by Rasta, and perhaps a bit surprising, Rasta won, stealing the female from Makhulu, you can see the pictures of the fight here: https://www.leopardhills.com/blog/safari...n-estrous/

Impressive feat from Rasta considering that despite being 11, Makhulu was stated at the beginning of the year to be the most dominant by the ranger, winning most of the mating rights fights, and the second dominant male ( ranger said there were only 2 dominants ) was not even Rasta, but Dreadlocks. Reply