Asiatic lions outside India

[BorneanTiger]

Today, the Asiatic lion (which was considered to be a subspecies of its own, with the scientific name Panthera leo persica, before being subsumed by the Cat Specialist Group in 2017 to the Northern lion subspecies (Panthera leo leo), due to its genetic closeness with lions in northern parts of Africa, including the Barbary and West African lions) is found either in the wilderness of Gujarat State in Western India, in and around Gir Forest, or in captivity. Previously, it is recorded to have had a huge range extending from India or South Asia (including what is now Pakistan) in the east, to Anatolia (the Asian part of Turkey) in the west, and Transcaucasia (or "South Caucasus", including Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and Central Asia (including the oasis' region of Khwarizm) in the north, barring lions which historically occurred in southern Europe (including Greece, there's another threadfor that): https://www.wdl.org/en/item/17720/view/2/342/, https://archive.org/stream/journalofbomb...2/mode/2up, https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...2/mode/2up

Let me first start with depictions of this population of lions in the book of Heptner and Sludskiy (1972), note the belly-covering manes: https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...2/mode/2up

*This image is copyright of its original author

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[Ingonyama6]

Here are some accounts of Asian lions interacting and preying on pachyderms.

The Asian lion population in Iraq attacked and fed on domestic Indian elephants (Link  https://issuu.com/dr-normanalibassamkhalaf/docs/the_asiatic_or_persian_lion_in_pale) Page 7

*This image is copyright of its original author

Dr Nouman Khalaf was quoting Al-Jahiz, a legendary muslim zoologist and pioneer. When Jahiz wrote that Asian lions hunt domestic elephants was between the 7th and 8th century, when the two co-existed. 

First of all lets see the ranges and maps.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Range of the Asian Elephant. Credits to Wiki

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can clearly see, the two species definately co-existed at one time. Only their mass extermination stopped them from crossing paths anymore. I would also like to point out that wherever lions and pachyderms co-existed at any point, the lion has killed them on occasions. Lets take the cave lions of Europe for example. They hunted mammoths.
http://dl.booktolearn.com/ebooks2/science/biology/9780226780269_the_wild_cat_book_7731.pdf


What Al-Jahiz wrote is understandable. There are footages of lions hunting young elephants and expert accounts of them killing adults. 



Lions have been known to charge and pull down elephants, riders and all during lion hunts.

*This image is copyright of its original author

https://archive.org/stream/lionstigerscc00jardrich#page/110/mode/2up/ Reply

[BorneanTiger]

(06-10-2020, 11:04 PM)Ingonyama6 Wrote: Here are some accounts of Asian lions interacting and preying on pachyderms.

The Asian lion population in Iraq attacked and fed on domestic Indian elephants (Link  https://issuu.com/dr-normanalibassamkhalaf/docs/the_asiatic_or_persian_lion_in_pale) Page 7

*This image is copyright of its original author

Dr Nouman Khalaf was quoting Al-Jahiz, a legendary muslim zoologist and pioneer. When Jahiz wrote that Asian lions hunt domestic elephants was between the 7th and 8th century, when the two co-existed. 

First of all lets see the ranges and maps.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Range of the Asian Elephant. Credits to Wiki

*This image is copyright of its original author

As we can clearly see, the two species definately co-existed at one time. Only their mass extermination stopped them from crossing paths anymore. I would also like to point out that wherever lions and pachyderms co-existed at any point, the lion has killed them on occasions. Lets take the cave lions of Europe for example. They hunted mammoths.
http://dl.booktolearn.com/ebooks2/science/biology/9780226780269_the_wild_cat_book_7731.pdf


What Al-Jahiz wrote is understandable. There are footages of lions hunting young elephants and expert accounts of them killing adults. 



Lions have been known to charge and pull down elephants, riders and all during lion hunts.

*This image is copyright of its original author

https://archive.org/stream/lionstigerscc00jardrich#page/110/mode/2up/

(06-11-2020, 01:07 AM)Ashutosh Wrote: How can someone living in 800AD report on interaction between Asiatic Elephants and Asiatic lions when the Syrian Elephant went extinct in 700BC?!?! 

They didn’t even share the same habitat for the most part. Syrian elephants were only restricted to mangroves and the coast whereas the lions were more in dry part of the middle East.

About the above post by @Ingonyama6 in the other page, strictly speaking, Al-Jahez said that Iraqi lions fed on domesticated Indian elephants (Elephas maximus indicus; hence imported, think of Hannibal Barca, the Phœnician general from Carthage (present-day Tunisia in North Africa) who had an Asian elephant), not wild Syrian or Middle Eastern elephants (Elephas maximus asurus). What he mentioned about wild elephants was that they could defend themselves, not necessarily that Middle Eastern lions fed on wild Middle Eastern elephants. Reply

[BorneanTiger]

(07-10-2020, 11:47 PM)BigCatsWild Wrote: The Prey of the Asian Lion (outside India)

Richard Lydekker (who was one of the most renowned naturalists of his time) wrote that the staple food for lions in Persia was the wild boar. The information is from his book, The Royal Natural History

Quote:It has been already mentioned that in the oak forests of Persia the staple food of the lions is formed by the wild pigs which frequent these woods.

*This image is copyright of its original author

I would like to add that wild boars in Iran are no joke. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Vladimir Georgevich Hepter wrote about the ungulate prey of lions in the Caucasus. Mammals of the Soviet Union

Quote:All these supported a large number of deer, roe deer, wild boar, while in the steppes were large numbers of goitered gazelle and kulan. Huge reserves of ungulates were available to lions as food (cheetah also fed on them). The disappearence of lion is naturally associated with an increse in human population and a change in environmental conditions, which in turn led to an impoverishment of ungulates in the country ; thus, kulan had disappeared from the Trans-Caucasus in the thirteenth century.

*This image is copyright of its original author

We have a separate thread for Asiatic lions outside India, to avoid the other threadgetting clogged. Reply

[BorneanTiger]

(08-03-2020, 08:11 PM)WildCats30 Wrote: A murderous Iranian Lion.

This is the story of a Asian lion that haunted the Plains of Ram Hormuz in the 1800s. It almost every day killed a horse, cow or man. Before it was killed, it severely mauled two of its hunters. It was unusually large and very dark.

*This image is copyright of its original author

https://archive.org/details/earlyadventures01laya/page/444/mode/2up?q=

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[BorneanTiger]

In the 19th century, not just the species Panthera leo, but also the Asiatic lion was considered to be divided into different subspecies: the Bengal lion of South Asia, the Arabian or Persian lion of the Middle East (possibly including the extinct lions of Europe), and the "Maneless lion of Guzerat (Gujarat)" (apparently due to these lions having rather weak manes, rather than being absolutely maneless, and it's not like other Asiatic lions, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, didn't have weak manes): https://books.google.com/books?id=TX7BmP...&q&f=false, https://books.google.com/books?id=GWslAA...on&f=false
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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[BorneanTiger]

Dr. Khalaf von Jaffa made this report about the past occurrence of the lion in the Middle East, and its cultural significance: http://www.oocities.org/jaffacity/Asiatic_Lion.html.tmp

He also made this video of a taxidermied lion in a museum in Jerusalem! https://issuu.com/dr-normanalibassamkhal...museum_baq
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