North-East / Central / Equatorial African lions

[Lycaon]

Two males in Gambella national park

*This image is copyright of its original author

Source : =68.ARC2YttrWC2Jpr8Rh5cmsmQ7bVOqrDSXZ1KcPxDsOv1UQO_cMNVXOWUh-C1NeXDKR7o7UmRvXESGPvjdnPHrnckK42shfVXBHe9fjZHh4WR-UJLOo_JPETtWSPO-BViKPKlRwlyoNVYqiAjctFmb8Xnny2BaIzLiuaxHXc3zwd4w9nUcH4HmSBYNyng_OsFYkcpWHGP_9IlqFkZf--0rGNbS9r2aHga-eky8Fz4kSHgTq_TI_MUWxf3xJk2kLZLbP_TJoKr-4M3ALwlmTTTk_I5GJyZxS-k9xbCyissampdpiV1XE8PShhVyRPTiVb5WTTboflATN-gB8Uyd9aTLVm3pJQ&__tn__=kC-R]Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority Reply

[Lycaon]

Dennis Stogsdill


Male lion patrols his territory as the setting sun paints the sky

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Lycaon]

Iris Breeman

One of the most succesful hunting techniques for lions around Riguiek is to chase prey into the mud. Prey will get stuck and become an easy target. The only downside for the lions is: there is no place to wash your face afterwards... ?

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[chui_]

I'm liking these threads on lions from different regions of Africa. Geographic variation in mammals and adaptations to different ecological conditions is what really interests me (hence my love for leopards which reign supreme in this department). Some contributions...

A vintage photo of a robust looking male in what is now Virunga NP in the DR Congo.

*This image is copyright of its original author

A pair of lions in the Central African Republic (from what I recall this photo was taken in a hunting concession in eastern CAR).

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Lycaon]

Zakouma male with North african oststich

*This image is copyright of its original author

Credits: http://www.safaritalk.net/topic/20112-zakouma-%E2%80%93-a-belated-report-from-march-2019/ Reply

[BorneanTiger]

(08-06-2019, 11:22 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 06:38 PM)Sanju Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 06:35 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 06:13 PM)Sanju Wrote: Panthera leo leo Population is known or referred as "Northern Lion". My suggestion is to alter this thread name to that. IMO @BorneanTiger  

Actually, a problem that I've highlighted earlier is that Southern lions (Panthera leo melanochaita) are also present in North-East or Central Africa, and that's why we have this thread, to make it clear that there are issues with the Cat Specialist Group's classification of lions in Central Africa as Panthera leo leo and those in East Africa (which includes Ethiopia) as Panthera leo melanochaita, and that's why there's a question mark on the map of lion subspecies in Page 72: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y

*This image is copyright of its original author

Yes, there is a considerable hybridization b/w melonochaita and leo in that zone.

It's not necessarily the case that they found mixed up lions (Panthera leo leo × Panthera leo melanochaita), it's to do with where geneticists found Northern (P. l. leo) and Southern lions (P. l. melanochaita) in Ethiopia or Northeast Africa. Firstly, let's start with the genetic study that made the captive Ethiopian lions at Addis Abeba Zoo famous, that of Bruche et al. Ethiopia is in East Africa, so it was expected that these lions would be closely related to wild East African lions in Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti ecosystem. However, the Addis Abeba lions (Haplotype 6) were found to be genetically distinct from other East African lions (including those at Ngorongoro and Serengeti, and Haplotypes 8 and 10, which included lions in Uganda, Somalia and Tsave East National Park in Kenya) besides the Asiatic (Haplotypes 1 and 2) and Southern African lions (Haplotypes 10–15, including those at Kruger National Park in South Africa, and Etosha National Park in Namibia), and captive Yemeni lions at Sana'a Zoo (which were thought to be of Ethiopian origin, Haplotype 9), and genetically close to wild Central African lions (Haplotypes 4 and 5) in Chad (particularly in Zakouma National Park) and Cameroon (particularly Bénoué and Waza National Parks), among others (including apparently those impure Barbary lions at Rabat Zoo which have Central, Western or Northeast African descent), despite being termed "genetically unique". The Addis Ababa lions also showed little signs of inbreeding compared to wild populations: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10344-012-0668-5





 
This image of an Addis Ababa lion is in the article by Bruche et al.: https://grist.org/article/a-new-species-of-lion-has-been-discovered-in-an-ethiopian-zoo/

*This image is copyright of its original author

Now take the case of wild lions in the national parks of Nechisar and Bale Mountains in southern Ethiopia. Nechisar is closer to the Central African country of South Sudan, where the Northern subspecies (P. l. leo) is supposed to be present, and Bale is closer to the East African country of Kenya, where the Southern subspecies (P. l. melanochaita) is supposed to be present: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nechisar+National+Park+HQ/@6.4277328,38.0536487,6z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x17babc96ec793a1b:0x35422b2c5ef1ddab!8m2!3d6.0259866!4d37.5679153



However, scat samples of lions in Nechisar (Numbers 52 and 53) were found to cluster with East African samples from Kenya and Somali in a single Haplotype (13), part of what Bertola et al. referred to as the "North-east clade" of the Southern lion group, whereas a scat sample from a lion in Bale (Number 54) was found to cluster with Central African samples from Chad, D. R. Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic in another Haplotype (9), in what Bertola et al. referred to as the "Central clade" of the Northern lion group: https://media.nature.com/original/nature-assets/srep/2016/160804/srep30807/extref/srep30807-s1.pdf

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

To put it simply, even though Nechisar is geographically closer to the Northern subspecies' territory in Central Africa, lions in Nechisar are apparently Southern lions, and even though Bale is closer to the Southern subspecies' territory in East Africa, Bale lions are apparently Northern lions, which is why the maps provided be Bertola et al. and the Cat Specialist Group depict Ethiopia as where the ranges of the Northern and Southern subspecies overlap: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4973251/, https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/32616/A_revised_Felidae_Taxonomy_CatNews.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y#page=71

*This image is copyright of its original author

That famous lion in Bale Mountains National Park, apparently of the Northern subspecies (P. l. leo): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/02/black-mane-ethiopian-lions-video-endangered-species/

*This image is copyright of its original author

 
Lion in Nechisar National Park, apparently of the Southern subspecies (P. l. melanochaita): 

As I mentioned in this thread, even if northern Central African lions belong to the same subspecies as Barbary, West African and Asiatic lions, that doesn't mean that there aren't genetic differences between them. Reply

[Lycaon]

Fiona Miller

Lion eating his buffalo dinner. Kidepo national park

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Lycaon]

Lioness in Zakouma with buffalo . Credits: A2A Safaris

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Lycaon]

Lions in Kidepo valley.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Source: https://www.schicka.at/unsere-reisen/uganda-2015/kidepo-np/ Reply

[Lycaon]

Dennis Stogsdill

One of my fav lion shots because of the fall-like colors

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Lycaon]

Leo Foundation

Old male in Cameroon.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Lycaon]

Short read on the census of zakouma national park. Chad

Zakouma lion census Reply

[BorneanTiger]

(01-23-2019, 10:59 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Now for the Nubian lion (Panthera leo nubica), whose taxonomic name was used for East African lions to the south, or confused with the Atlas lion. Nubia is a historical region which is currently divided between Egypt and Sudan, so when De Blainville described a lion under Felis leo nubicus in 1843, he wasn't referring to a lion from the Atlas Mountains or Kenya, but from either Egypt or Sudan (https://web.archive.org/web/201707281311...ra_leo.pdf).

Image of lion reliefs in Nubian Sudan by The Wire: https://thewire.in/history/rediscovering...ubia-sudan

*This image is copyright of its original author

Nubian lion in New York Zoo, 1903: https://archive.org/stream/annualreportn...9/mode/1up

*This image is copyright of its original author

Remember Jackie the MGM lion (1928–1956)?

Jackie was said to be from the Nubian desert of Sudan: https://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/201...l_tid.html

To explain better how the Nubian lion (Panthera leo nubica) of Northeast Africa isn't the Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) of the Maghreb (Northwest Africa):

The Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) inhabited the Maghreb (Northwest Africa), particularly the fairly temperate region of the Atlas Mountains, whereas the Nubian lion (Panthera leo nubica) inhabited the desert region of Nubia (divided between the present countries of Egypt and Sudan) in Northeast Africa.

Map of Northeast Africa, with the Nubian desert shown to the south, by Jeff Dahl:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Pyramids at Meroë, in the Nubian part of Sudan, by B. N. Chagny:
   

So confusing between the Barbary and Nubian lions is like confusing between the Amur and Bengal tigers, because just as the Barbary lion inhabited a temperate region of Africa (the region of the Atlas Mountains), the Siberian tiger inhabits a temperate area (the border-region of China, Korea and Russia), and just as the Bengal tiger inhabits rather hot countries like India, the Nubian lion was from the hot Nubian region. As in, can you imagine an Amur tiger living in a rather hot country like India, or a Barbary lion living in a desert like that of Nubia? https://www.definitions.net/definition/nubian%20lion, https://www.dict.cc/english-german/Nubia...eo%5D.html, http://beinglion.com/barbary-lions.php, https://animalsake.com/facts-about-barbary-lion, https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispee...y_Lion.htm, https://bigcatrescue.org/barbary-lions/

Former habitat of the Barbary lion (https://archive.org/stream/bookoflion191...2/mode/2up), the montane forest outside Chelia in Algeria, with the Aurès Mountains in the background, by Charif Ben Boulaïd:
    Reply

[BorneanTiger]

Mummified lion cubs, dating back about 2,600 years, discovered in Egyptian necropolis at Saqqara, which is otherwise known for its cat mummies and statues. Rare finds there also include crocodiles, cobras, mongooses and dozens of cats: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...15401.html, https://www.livescience.com/lion-cub-mum...egypt.html

Peter Stubley, The Independent

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[Rishi]

(11-22-2019, 09:00 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: So confusing between the Barbary and Nubian lions is like confusing between the Amur and Bengal tigers, because just as the Barbary lion inhabited a temperate region of Africa (the region of the Atlas Mountains)...

Are you saying that based on actual genetic data? ...otherwise it's just speculation. Barbary lion's natural distribution extended fron Morocco to Sinai along coastal North Africa with sporadic presence in parts of northern Sahara as those areas got desertfied in last 5000 years.

We have tigers living in similar distances at semi-arid Rajasthan, snowy Bhutan & subtropical rainforest of NE India, all of the same subspecies, albeit with minor local variations.
On the other hand, climate or vegetation of the Sahara adjoining Red Sea & Mediterranean sea are very very similar, except for the thin strip on Nile's banks. Northwestern Libya has some costal areas with Mediterranean type vegetation, the rest of their habitat in Libya & Egypt were all same deserts. Reply