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The Mighty Mapogos
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Hei @vizions and @majingilane and all other who is so well informed of the lions of Sabi sands, we need a thred dedicated to the Mapogos! Share information and pictures :-) I will put in as much info as I can, but you know much more about them than I do!
Amazing Pantherinae!! I think it's great to honor this males, they were true legends.
And to start this, the other day in facebook, Karin van der Merwe(the woman who witnessed the fight between the Mapogo and the Majingilane, she talked about it in Natgeo "Caught in the wild" ) she said that soon a documentary about the Mapogo will be aired. She didn't said anything else, but if it's true it will be great to have a good documentary that speaks the truth about male lions.
Yeah I heard that! Hope that actually happens:-)
I can't wait to have a thread dedicated to the Mapogos' with information, pictures and videos! it's just to get started! I will try to add some tomorrow :-) and hope you and others will contribute:-)
So the Mapogo males were born in the Sparta pride, also known as the Eyrefield pride.
Makhulu, the oldest of the males, wasn't original of the pride. The sparta pride had lost a subadult male in may/june of 2000 and Makhulu suddenly appeared in the pride. He wasn't accepted really, but the West street males, a coalition of five males and dominant over the pride didn't kill him. I tried to ask in facebook, mostly in some lion groups but no one has answered me. The next three males, T2/Pretty Boy and Rasta/Leonides(called the twins) and a little younger male called Dreadlocks/Snip Tail were sired by the West street males. Apparently the two younger males Kinky Tail/Shaka and Mr.T/Mohawk were sire by the Roller Coaster Males/Shaw males (sons of the West street males) when the older West street were away from the pride. The oestrus time in the females is confusing(I think they do this on purpose) so it is unclear who were the fathers of the two younger Mapogo. The Rollercoaster males  *This image is copyright of its original author Kinky tail and Mr.T  *This image is copyright of its original author Maybe I'm wrong, but I see some resemblance between the males. What do you think? 
They look similar to me but obviously male lions are much harder to distinguish, for me at least they are. Hopefully I will learn to look for the slight differences the same as I have done for Tigers, but even those are still extremely hard to know for sure.
Young Mr.T and KT (darkmane at a young age)
 *This image is copyright of its original author KT and Dreadlocks in dec 2007:  *This image is copyright of its original author The 1st photo was taken by Greg McCall-Peat. He passed a lot of time with the Mapogos and lions in general and he has a ton of photos, here's his facebook if you wanna take a look. Here's what he have to said about the Mapogos: "I honestly believe that the Mapogos were a once in a lifetime coalition, there will never be lions like them, they commanded respect and showed behaviour that still cant really be explained to this day...i have spent most of my life in the bush and never seen lions like them. Mapogo werent the biggest lions ive seen but they had a presence about them, that and being the first of the large coalitions also puts them above the rest. Our coalition is currently 6 males and as much as id like them to be Mapogo they just arent, they dont have that Mapogo personality even though they are a big coalition like mapogo were. Notch and his sons arent Mapogo, the Majingis arent Mapogo, the Selatis arent Mapogo the Olifants west males arent Mapogo and neither are the Mathimbas.....those who got to know the mapogo are privilaged to have been in the presence of such awesome lions."
@vizions I agree even though I did not get so involved with them, I'm so impressed with their attitude and presence, mr.t is probably the most aggressive I've ever seen alongside a lion called renoka from moremi.
I think it's hard to compare the Notch boys to any sabi sands coalition, since they behave quite different, but the Notch boys has an incredible story, but as you say the mapogos are the real deal. (05-10-2015, 04:43 AM)'vizions' Wrote: Young Mr.T and KT (darkmane at a young age) It's true @vizions . In the lions groups in facebook, there are many people that still love them so much that constantly talks bad about the Majingilane. And I understand it. Granted, when I read about them Mak was already gone, but you can sense the reverence that people feel about them. I think one of the things that made them special was that few people really knew about male lions. And suddenly you have this big coalition of males that spends a lot of time together, walking, patrolling, fighting and killing and suddenly years later there is already something mythical about them, and not just as a coalition, but also individually.  *This image is copyright of its original author It's difficult to talk about the Mapogo males without talking about him. The old man. He was an outcast in the Sparta pride, barely tolerated by the West street males, the dominant coalition and the females of the pride. But he stayed. And he survived. Soon he was helping the lionesses take out big prey, especially when the West street males started to age. I have found little about the Mapogo when they started thier nomad life, but one thing is certain. He was there, helping the young lads, protecting them and teaching them to hunt. You can see Makhulu in the back, big and powerful with his amazing dark mane even when the others were just beginning to have theirs.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author One of the things that I like more about him is how tolerant he was with the cubs.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author I know you guys know much more than me about the Mapogo brothers so I will add just one more thing that I love about Big Mak. His roar. He was the first that started the roar and he was always the last one, with his rough grunts always outlasting his brothers.  *This image is copyright of its original author And he also did it in their old days.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author He was the first one. And he was the last Mapogo.
The oldest and the last one seen alive at 15years old. He was probably the reason why the Mapogos didn't loose any members in their first years out of the tribe. He defeated the dominant male of the Othawa pride and the Sand river pride on his own. Here's the report of this fight:
"The new males first came into contact with the Ottawa pride but continued to push west as the Ottwas ran across the river to escape from them. Over the next few weeks the new males slowly moved further west until one night the oldest male (Makulu) left the others and followed the scent of Nhlanguleni all the way to the western fence, north of the river. The next morning the rangers following the tracks found the evidence (blood, scuff-marks etc) of a huge fight between the two males. The large male from the coalition was found heading east to rejoin the others, bleeding heavily from the mouth and showing many scratches from the fight, on closer inspection it was seen that his lower right canine had been snapped in half. Later on Nhlanguleni was found, limping badly and with a terrible wound on the right side of his face, the wound was deep and it seemed he had lost an eye, inside the wound was what suspiciously like a broken canine tooth lodged in the cheekbon" 
From the day I saw them in the rescue center I visited every now and then, I thought lions compared to humans. Or, more accurate, the other way round. Thanks to Packer and those who compare to him (very few), this idea is confirmed nearly every time I read an article or see a documentary. Lions, like us, compete for space and developed into very intelligent animals living in complex social structures. My guess is the more we know about them, the more we learn about ourselves.
Those who know about this forum know my trade is tigers. The attempt to learn a few things about them takes so much time, it limits the intention to extent to lions. But I read a lot about lions and much appreciate the posts of those informing us about them (Pantherinae, Vizions, Majingilane and, until some time ago, WaveRiders). Please continue. One of the most interesting thing about lions is the way they solve problems about space. Coalitions, war and peace. The question is why and when they start and end. Another question is why wars in different regions seem to be different from each other. The last question, for now, is which regions produce the most powerful coalitions. Any patterns visible over time? 
True word Peter.
I really thanks Majingilane, Vizions and Pantherinae for making some very awesome Thread on Lions. Like tiger its awesome to know each individual personally. I love to hear the story behind them. I hope in upcoming days we will have more Lion expert and will provide more story of such individuals. After reading these things about Lion my view is changing about them. They are very Impressive animals. Their social behavior is more close to human when compared to other big predators
Kinky tail's last fight! Horrible to watch as the Majingilane kills him, listen when they break his back!
Impressive video of Dreadlocks climbing a tree to steal a leopard kill.
KT and T greeting each over. Mr.T, KT, PB Rasta and Dreadlocks harrassing the styx pride and trying to find cubs to kills. The end of the video is a total mess with Mr.T attacking one of his brother for coming too close to his lionesse. |
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