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Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos
Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos
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Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos
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 (04-27-2019, 10:26 AM)Sanju Wrote:(04-26-2019, 11:55 PM)Spalea Wrote: only one place where Asiatic lions live freethats the prblm Yes, that is the problem... Extrem genetic fragility, population increasing more and more faster overlapping more and more with human populations and with domestic cattle and pet (non-vaccinated dogs)... By doing nothing we will provoke the worst.  Gir Lion.. Roar Mukeshh Khunt @Spalea Gujarat most probably may apply for patents on Panthera leo urbanensis saying it don't come under lion (persica/leo) which is a part of nature of Indian Subcontinent and belongs to all not anybody's property/asset according to Indian constitution. It is a new breed unlike spp created solely by Gujarat so it may ask patent rights in the same way China owns all the world's pandas through panda diplomacy. Don't know where these consequences of this lion ownership will lead the asiatic lions race..
No belly fold.
  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Prashant Chudgar *This image is copyright of its original author
Two Lionesses try to hunt a female sambar deer with a fawn (Stags can weigh upto 546 kg (1,204 lb) [equivalent to african prey weights as wildebeest, zebra, female african buffalo], though more typically 100 to 350 kg (220 to 770 lb) http://placentation.ucsd.edu/sdeer.html; Burnie D and Wilson DE (Eds.), Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide to the World's Wildlife). Hunt failed though. Two subadult lions eating a chital stag kill which could be snatched from leopard. Another lioness try to hunt chital but failed. A pride of 4 females and 8 cubs hunt a chital successfully. CLICK TO PLAY Dharmesh Dudhat Are those 4 lions at 5:32 are the same as in the recent illegal video of 4 huge males patrolling shot in Dec 2018 ??? Wilddestinations Workshop Asiatic Lion along with European Lion, Central, West African and Barbary (Moroccan & Egyptian) is classified as Northern Lion subspecies (Panthera leo leo) divided from Southern Lion subspecies (P. l. melanochaita) about 1,00,000 years ago. It's distribution is ranged throughout North Hemisphere of Africa and in Eurasia from Portugal, Spain to India's West India, Central India, South India including East India's West Bengal. Indian Lion entered Indian subcontinent after plesitocene lion extinction in the subconinet where it was contemporary with Wanhsien Tiger or acutidens (sinhaleyus spp descendant of antique notodomeri lion of east Africa). Slightly after, Bengal Tiger entered Subcontinent due to advancement of forest and jungle ecosystems from southeast Asia into the newly hard-collided Indian subcontinent tectonic plate about 25 mya. After which Lion and Tiger coexisted upto 19th Century. Distribution is according to 2015 lion census in Asiatic Lion Conservation Landscape. Now it's way more than that.
@Lycaon Interesting
  *This image is copyright of its original author How Asiatic lionesses shield their cubs from killer males Quote:Infanticide is common among India's lions, but females have developed a clever strategy to keep their cubs safe. The lioness known as FLG10 is a good mother and fierce hunter, providing for her cubs in the last stronghold of Asiatic lions in Gujarat, India. But until recently, no one knew just how extraordinary of a parent she really is. Like most young females of this endangered lion subspecies, FLG10 reached sexual maturity and mated with members of her primary coalition, the group of males that most frequently patrolled her pride’s territory in Gir National Park. Then, around 2015, she did something never before observed in lions: She mated with males from a nearby coalition. And then with males from another. (Read more about Asiatic lions and why they’re thriving.) To the scientists tracking her, FLG10 appeared to be mating with a strategy in mind. As it turns out, she was. By mating with males from every coalition that entered her territory, the now 10-year-old lioness was likely protecting her cubs from infanticide by deliberately obscuring the identity of their father. It worked—none of her cubs were killed, the researchers claim in a new study in Behavioral Ecology. “If an adult lion comes across a cub that he feels was not sired by him, he’ll kill that cub,” which then leads the female to breed again, says study co-author Stotra Chakrabarti, a biologist at the Wildlife Institute of India. (Read why animals sometimes kill their babies.)  *This image is copyright of its original author “Females mate with multiple males and confuse paternity among the males so they’ll consider all the cubs their own.” A successful strategy In addition to observing radio-collared lions, Chakrabarti and his team pieced together FLG10’s family tree using observational data collected by researchers in the decades since his mentor, Yadvendradev Jhala, began the long-term monitoring project in 1996. Next, to see if other females were using the same strategy, the team spent four years monitoring nine female prides—including FLG10’s—and 11 male coalitions. The results showed they were, frequently and quite effectively. Ultimately, every lioness that gave birth at least twice during the course of the study was witnessed mating with multiple males. Amazingly, no lioness lost cubs to a coalition whose members she had mated with. (See a map of the lion's decline worldwide.) However, there are some unknowns in the multi-male mating hypothesis, notes Craig Packer, director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota. For instance, it’s assumed that males from different coalitions aren’t brothers or cousins. If they are, they have other reasons for not committing infanticide, says Packer, who is also a National Geographic explorer. From Asia to Africa Mating with multiple males is not observed in African lions, likely because of the difference in prey availability between the two groups, says Meredith Palmer, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton. Abundant deer in and around Gir have led Asiatic lions to develop a social system composed of female prides with two to four lionesses and male coalitions typically with two members. Lions share their kills, so the smaller prey in Gir more easily supports smaller groups. The prides hold small territories, and the coalitions patrol larger tracts that contain multiple prides. The trouble for cubs is coalition territories overlap, meaning the cubs are likely to run across unrelated males. This isn’t a problem for African lions. Large, migratory prey support large prides that are exclusive (for a few years) to a single coalition. Females are faithful to their breeding partners, and fathers and uncles keep potentially infanticidal males away until they’re displaced by a new coalition. This study adds to a growing body of research that allows comparisons of the Asiatic and African species and their societies. “Lions are a lot more behaviorally plastic than we thought,” Palmer says. “Maybe they’re adapting genetically, but they’re definitely adapting behaviorally to these different circumstances.” Marauding males The genius of the multi-male mating strategy is that it raises the stakes for males, Chakrabarti says. “The cost to males for killing their own cubs is so high that they don’t kill cubs at all if they’re familiar to the females,” he says. But the strategy also has its limitations—it can’t protect against new coalitions of males that the females didn’t have a chance to mate with. Tragedy struck FLG10’s pride in 2017 when a new coalition of males swept through, killing her female and male cubs along with the rest of the pride’s young. After fighting off the primary mating coalition, the new males established themselves as the leaders. (See National Geographic's most stunning pictures of big cats.) “They want their own offspring to be born and thrive. So if those females already have babies, these males don’t want to hang around and wait for these babies to grow up,” Palmer says. Though no mother wants to lose her cubs, the invading males might actually benefit the species in the long run by injecting new genetic diversity into their pride. And, with only about 600 animals left in the wild, Asia’s last lions need all the help they can get.
Asiatic Lion Hunting
After the hunt, the group effort often degenerates to squabbling over the sharing of the kill, with cubs at the bottom of the pecking order. Young lions do not help the pride hunt until they are about a year old. The Asiatic lion, a subspecies that split from African lions around 100,000 years ago, once prowled across Eurasia. Sadly, the lions were hunted nearly to extinction, with as few as ten individuals left in existence by the late 1800s. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anima...atic-lion/ A Lioness hunted Chital Stag and dragged into thickets:
Living next door to lions | 11 April 2016
Interview with Gitanjali Bhattacharya, ZSL London Zoo Part of the show Conflict in Conservation  *This image is copyright of its original author In places, living alongside animals is unavoidable, which can cause people and animals to come into conflict with each other. But there are some success stories. India, one of the most densely populated countries in the world has hundreds of Asiatic lions living very closely with people in an area called the Gir Forest. And apparently, this causes no conflict. To find out why, Georgia Mills hopped over to ZSL London Zoo, who are working closely with the people of the Gir to conserve these lions... Gitanjali - I'm Gitanjali Bhattacharya and I'm the programme manager for South and Central Asia at the Zoological Society for London. This is the high street from Sasan Gir which we have recreated, so you've got a little snapshot of what life would be like to live really close to the edge of Gir forest in very close proximity to lions. Georgia - It is a bit like stepping abroad for a second. There's sort of a market stall with loads of sandals, there's a mural with a painting of a lion, and then right next to us (well, behind glass) is where the lions live. All very unlike what I'm used to at the zoo. Gitanjali - It's a very immersive exhibit and we've taken elements right from the conservation project and had teams come back and visit us in the Gir and taken snippets of it. So right here where we are standing is essentially the station platform, and for those of us who've been out there, essentially it's like being on the station platform in Sasan. Georgia - Having lions roaming around the train station is not something I've ever really thought about on my commute to work. But having an enormous predator as a next door neighbour is a reality for people in many parts of the world. Lions are living closer to farmland than ever before which leaves farmers at risk of having their livestock killed and the lions at risk of being shot in retaliation. But apparently this conflict does not occur in the Gir, so what's going on in this patch of India that's so different. Gitanjali - For me the Asiatic Lion story is is one of the greatest success stories for carnivore conservation anywhere in the world. We often hear about lions coming into conflict with humans in Africa and also big carnivores coming into conflict (even tigers) coming into conflict with humans in India. Whereas for these lions you have a local community in and around these areas that revere and worship the lions in their midst. You've got a very committed government that's doing everything it can to protect these lions. Georgia - You mentioned respect. They have respect for these lions but respect alone isn't enough to stop a lion from eating you or stealing your crops, so what else is going on here to keep this working? Gitanjali - You have local communities that can tell lion behaviour very closely just from observing them. Just a flick of a tail or just the way that a lioness may look up. The local community knows when the lion or lioness last hunted so they're very, very attuned to the ecology of the species. And what they do is they put their most productive livestock into the centre of this herd and put their unproductive cattle on the outside, essentially surrounding this, and that basically avoids conflict because they accept the fact that they're going to lose some heads of livestock, but it is their most unproductive livestock and, therefore, you avoid the situation of conflict. Georgia - Talking with Gitanjali there were two words that kept coming up - special and unique. And the relationship the locals have with the lions, a spiritual and religious one, is special, it's not seen elsewhere in the world really but it has a key part to play in this lack of conflict. So can this really be a conservation success story if it can't be replicated elsewhere? Well the lions in the Gir may be an exception to the norm but Gitanjali feels that key lessons like working with local communities and education can be applied elsewhere... Gitanjali - There's also daily lessons that we're learning in terms of rescue and rehabilitation of large cats. Leopards are a big issue around this area. So the lessons that we learn from the rescue and rehabilitation and movement of these large carnivores, lions and leopards included, are lessons that we're taking to the conservation projects that we do in other parts of the world, particularly in South Asia, which have a very similar cultural context. Georgia - Whether these lions are a conservation anomaly or not, I still wanted to see one so we went on the hunt... I can spot a lion. We've come through the high street under the temple looking bit and we've just approached a beautiful golden-brown lioness prowling the territory. Who's this? Gitanjali - So this is Heidi here who's one of our oldest lionesses and there's two twins, Indi and Ruby, who you can hear. Georgia - Is that them roaring? Gitanjali - Yes. Georgia - That fantastic! I don't think I've heard a lion roar before, so I'm very happy. Gitanjali - Well you can hear lions roaring from about 5 kilometers away so it's quite a powerful sound and I think you can sort of hear it echoing in your chest. So very, very, special sound indeed. You cannot help but be amazed by the fact that you're just standing so close to a large predator. Georgia - Predator indeed, seeing this lion up close really hammered it home that this was an animal you really wouldn't want to mess with, and while I was safe behind glass, that is not the case for the people who live in the Gir forest... Gitanjali - So this is one of the Malhari huts and these are the people that live in the forest and I just find it astonishing how close some of these children get to Asiatic Lions. I know if my six year old got anywhere that close to lions I would be terrified. Georgia - And there you have it. These lions can kill people so what if the worst happens, how do you reconcile the need to save these animals from extinction against a human life? Again, these lines to be something of an anomaly. Gitanjali - It's a really interesting story in the Gir and, actually, you have to be there to be able to imbibe the culture of the people as well as to be able to understand the deep and enormous amount of respect that they have for these large predators. I have been in Gutrath when there have been instances of a 25 year old being killed and the chief wildlife warden got called and out and he went instantly. There was a huge media frenzy around somebody so young being killed by a lioness and it was actually extraordinary, given the fact that somebody so young had died, that the people in the community were averse to this lioness being removed from their field, from within them, because the lioness had had cubs and the local community felt very much a sense that it belonged to their community, and essentially protested against this lioness being moved just because somebody had come too close to it and didn't respect the boundaries that they believe in. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/artic...-door-lion
Cats on the Move
Even so, scientists are concerned that disease or natural disaster could wipe out the entire Gir population in one fell swoop. Some Asiatic lions live in zoos worldwide, but there are no plans to release those animals to build a wild population. To avoid this fate, the Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project, an Indian government initiative, plans to capture some 12 - 40 odd Asiatic lions from Gir and relocate them to the Palpur-Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary, located in another state. That way, if anything happens to Gir, there will still be lions in Palpur-Kuno. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016...servation/
Asia's Last Lions
(Short film or documentary) https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016...servation/
Big cats of Gir facing a big problem: 26 lions and 5 cubs might never be released back into the wild
 *This image is copyright of its original author REPRESENTATIONAL PICTURE : RESCUED AND REVIVED, GIR LIONS’ RELEASE IS IN PERIL
Big cats of Gir are facing a big problem. After being kept in captivity for more than six months following the outbreak of Canine Distemper Virus (CDV), 26 lions and 5 cubs might never be released back into the wild. Experts believe that their long captivity, prolonged interaction with humans and inability to hone natural instinct to hunt has reduced their chance of surviving in the wild. @Lycaon Guj govt not even releasing them into Ambardi/Devaliya Safari Parks (Semi-Wild)  They might be clone editing them with CRISPR for the last 6 months... After the outbreak of Canine Distemper Virus in Dalkhaniya range ended up killing at least 30 lions between September and December, the forest department rounded up the big cats to check for signs of infection. The lions were sent to rescue centres, given vaccines imported from the US and kept under observation. According to sources, there are about five cubs in captivity along with adult lions. Cubs brought up in captivity have lower chances of being able to survive in the wild. As is their wont, lion mothers train their cubs to hunt in the wild as they grow. The cubs living and fed in captivity for over six months haven’t got the opportunity to learn and hone their natural traits of hunting, unlike those living in the Gir. This makes them ill-equipped to catch prey, feed themselves and survive in the wild. Wildlife experts say not just cubs, but adult lions too may find it difficult to adapt to forest environment back again after such a prolonged stay in captivity. The authorities have not yet set a date for the release of the captive lions and cubs in Gir. However, Chief Conservator of Forest D T Vasavada  says the lions are healthy and doing well. Principal Chief Conservator of Forest and Wildlife Warden A K Saxena told Mirror, “The lions have been vaccinated, so we need to follow a certain protocol before releasing them. They have to be kept under observation for long periods as medical teams need to check their immunity and analyse other effects of vaccines. Also, certain medical tests have to be carried out to check whether or not these big cats have started producing antibodies naturally.” Cubs may have to remain captive for much longer, perhaps all life, as they have learnt to be fed artificially, Saxena added. It all began six months ago when over 30 lions died in about 3 months’ time. In fact, over 23 of them died in just 20 days in September 2018 alone of suspected Canine Distemper Virus. Most of the deaths were reported from Dalkhaniya range of Gir (east). Following this, 31 lions were rescued from the affected area near Semerdi in Gir so as to avoid more casualties. In Semerdi, an alarming 11 lions had died in a span of three days. The captured lions were housed at a veterinary facility in Devaliya. They were given vaccines at specific times over a duration in keeping with the protocol for such disease outbreaks. HS Singh, retired Principal Chief Conservator of Forest and Chairman of Gujarat Biodiversity Board said, “Since these captive lions have interacted so much with humans during their treatment, it is not appropriate to release them in their habitat. We don’t know how they will behave in the wild.” With long periods of living near humans, the lions can lose fear of humans and approach them fearlessly in the wild, leading to higher incidence of animal-human conflict. On the other hand, these lions may also have lost the ability to hunt which could affect their survival. Singh added, “Their territory may also have been taken over by other animals, which leaves them with more competition for food than earlier.” Currently, there are more than 700 lions in the Gir region; the numbers having grown at healthy rate in the last five years, with the highest density being in Brihad Gir and Gir east. They are now moving out to revenue areas and making new places their home. The lions that got affected by the virus infection died of respiratory and hepatic failure. After the receipt of test reports from Pune-based Institute of Virology, the lions were rescued and given vaccine shots. Department had ordered 300 shots of vaccines from US for the lions in last six months. Recently the forest department ordered another big consignment of 400 shots of the vaccine  . “We need to keep in a sufficient stock at all times  (better open a veterinary clinic like for domestic animals),” said Saxena. https://ahmedabadmirror.indiatimes.com/a...087664.cms  *This image is copyright of its original author According to sources, there are about five cubs in captivity along with adult lions; Pic :ROHAN TRIVEDI
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