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The size of the Barbary lion
The size of the Barbary lion
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The size of the Barbary lion
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 (09-25-2018, 06:17 AM)Wolverine Wrote: Does anybody knows what was the quantity ratio between Barbary lions and Persian lions thrown in the Roman arenas? Thousands, litterarly thousands of lions! For example in just one day, Julio Cesar killed 500 animals, in JUST ONE DAY!!! This is like the entire population of Indian lions! Interestingly this great feat (the transportation of the animals) do not took more than one year, which shows that Romans had already the capacity to transport large numbers of animals. However, on the other side, it is known that half of the transported animals died of stress in the transport, so we are taking of about 1,000 lions transported from North Africa for the celebration of the Cesar. 
I wonder what the genetic makeup of this captive Moroccan lion at Parc Sindibad in Casablanca is like. Its mane looks good enough to be that of a Barbary lion: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_lion.jpg
 *This image is copyright of its original author Interestingly, it was on a flight from Dakar (now the capital of Senegal) to Casablanca in 1925 that Marcelin Flandrin shot the last known photo of a wild Atlas lion: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0060174  *This image is copyright of its original author
@GuateGojira :
About #61: it's a fact, the romans were the first people to have made some massive wild animals deportations from their places of origin. Mainly from the Atlas mountains... But also from the Middle East. The non-sedated animals thrown with each other in small cages might be highly stressed and aggressiv during the crossing. And if few of these were wounded, they could be torn into pieces. It was already a slaugther before arriving into the arena. (04-26-2019, 12:18 AM)Spalea Wrote: @GuateGojira : If also from the Middle East, apart from North Africa, then would that also mean that they took in Asiatic lions, which was recorded in places like ancient Syria (https://zookeys.pensoft.net/lib/ajax_srv..._preview=1) and Turkey (https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...2/mode/2up, https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream...sAllowed=y) (where the Caspian tiger was BTW)? Also, do you know if they took in animals from European areas outside Italy, especially Greece, where the lion appears to have been present up to the early part of the first millennium CE (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300611h.html, https://archive.org/stream/pausaniassdes...earch/lion)? (04-26-2019, 09:40 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(04-26-2019, 12:18 AM)Spalea Wrote: @GuateGojira : C.A.W. Guggisberg spoke about the first emperor Marcus Fulvius Nobilior having sacrificed all the leopards and lions he had captured during his Aetolia campaign, 158 before Christmas. Always according to the same author, the first menageries would be dated from the 3th century BC. Mostly animals came from Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aetolia (04-26-2019, 11:05 AM)Spalea Wrote:(04-26-2019, 09:40 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(04-26-2019, 12:18 AM)Spalea Wrote: @GuateGojira : I see that Aetolia is in southwestern Greece, just north of the Mediterranean. What an interesting place for lions and leopards to be have been in: https://emptylighthouse.com/travel/aetol...to-go-2018  *This image is copyright of its original author Evinos River in Acarnania and Aetolia: https://www.alamy.com/evinos-river-in-ac...66488.html  *This image is copyright of its original author Mountains of Acarnania and Aetolia: https://www.dreamstime.com/mountains-aca...e105377133  *This image is copyright of its original author
(04-25-2019, 09:29 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: I wonder what the genetic makeup of this captive Moroccan lion at Parc Sindibad in Casablanca is like. Its mane looks good enough to be that of a Barbary lion: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_lion.jpg Unsurprisingly, it is said to be the Atlas lion (https://www.journeybeyondtravel.com/blog...rocco.html, https://www.tripadvisor.fr/LocationPhoto...egion.html), but I wonder what the genetic makeup is like? Here are some other photos from Parc Sindibad in Casablanca: TripAdvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.fr/LocationPhoto...egion.html  *This image is copyright of its original author Parc Sindibad's website: http://parcsindibad.ma/afrique-sauvage/  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
(04-28-2019, 03:27 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Parc Sindibad's website: http://parcsindibad.ma/afrique-sauvage/ This is a beautifull image of a captive Barbary lion in Morocco. I love this picture and altough I will like to use it for comparisons we lack the view of the paws. Maybe we can reconstruct it with other lion paws. About the genetic, it is known now that captive lions from Morocco had Barbary genes from the father side but also they have Central African lion genes from the mother side, so stricto sensu there are not "pure" Barbary lions. However using the new subspecies studies, the lions from Central/West/North Africa and Asia are the same subspecies Panthera leo leo, so in latu sensu they are "pure" lions and can be used for conservation, which is good. Interestingly if we want to be strict with the purity there is an study that states that Indian lions are closer to the original steam and are more "pure" genetically speaking, which suggest that Indian lions are more "Barbary" than those from Morocco, but that is irrelevant under the new subspecies clasification of the Cat Specialist Group. (05-13-2019, 10:07 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(04-28-2019, 03:27 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Parc Sindibad's website: http://parcsindibad.ma/afrique-sauvage/ Actually, as I highlighted here (https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-north-e...5#pid66275), not all Central African lions are of the Northern subspecies (Panthera leo leo), with others being of the Southern subspecies (Panthera leo melanochaita), so do you know exactly which Central African lion genes are present in these Sindibad lions on the maternal side? Bertola et al.: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep3080..._evolution  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author As for that lion which was first spotted in Batéké Plateau National Park in the Central African country of Gabon in 2015 (https://psmag.com/environment/the-forest-lion-of-gabon), it was determined by Barnett et al. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...017-1039-2) to be related to Southern African lions in Botswana or Namibia, and specimens from Franceville and Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the neighbouring Republic of Congo (a.k.a. Congo-Brazzaville, not to be confused with D. R. Congo, a.k.a. Congo-Kinshasa) were 99.9 % genetically similar to those of Batéké lions, differing by only 1 mutation (like the relationship between Caspian and Amur tigers), meaning that these lions in the Central African countries of Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville are likely of Southern African (Panthera leo melanochaita) origin, which is a further complication for the CSG, because they classified lions in Central Africa as belonging to the northern subspecies (Panthera leo leo, Pages 71−73: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/32616/A_revised_Felidae_Taxonomy_CatNews.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y) The Gabonese lion: https://psmag.com/environment/the-forest-lion-of-gabon  *This image is copyright of its original author
No, it doesn't say, there is the image:
 *This image is copyright of its original author Here is the document from Dr Ross Barnett and his team: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6448349/ It seems that his results challenge the ideat of only 2 "pure" African lion subspecies, at least in the central region of the continent. So it seems that Rabat zoo lions, the steam origin from all lions from Morocco, are not 100% Barbary origin, but those from India are the closest to the old Barbary lion. That is why some captive Indian lions, specially in cold climate, look like this:  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
(04-28-2019, 03:17 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(04-26-2019, 11:05 AM)Spalea Wrote:(04-26-2019, 09:40 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(04-26-2019, 12:18 AM)Spalea Wrote: @GuateGojira : How interesting that Acarnania and Aetolia have been mentioned here, because between these regions is the Acheolous River, which Herodotus (https://www.researchgate.net/publication...cal_record) mentioned as a boundary of the Greek lion's range: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-europea...6#pid82046 (05-13-2019, 11:09 PM)GuateGojira Wrote: No, it doesn't say, there is the image: I came across an interesting document about the history of the Royal Moroccan lions and Casablanca (pages 469–470: https://www.researchgate.net/publication...on_Project). It says that Moroccan Monarchs are believed to have kept lions that were descended from lions caught from the Atlas Mountains, and that when Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef (also known as King Mohammed V) abdicated and went into exile in 1953, 3 of his 21 lions in Rabat were transferred to a zoo in Casablanca, with the others being transferred to a zoo at Meknès, and then upon the return of the Sultan to Rabat in 1955, the lions at Meknès were returned to Rabat, but not those at Casablanca. However, Parc Sindibad doesn't have the only zoo in Casablanca. There's also Aïn Sebaâ Zoo, which had been poorly maintained (https://www.leconomiste.com/article/9174...ent-t-vacu, http://forceanimalintervention.over-blog...41855.html, https://observers.france24.com/en/201403...ap-animals), but is now being renovated (https://www.casa-amenagement.ma/en/nos-p...-ain-sebaa), and there is another zoo at Dream Village, where animals at Aïn Sebaâ were transferred to (https://lematin.ma/journal/2014/casablan...06795.html). Aïn Sebaâ Zoo: Dream Village Zoo:
They were supposed to do a genetic test on these stuffed lions in this famous diorama from the 19th Century, the mannequin of which was (eerily) discovered to have a real human skull with teeth, apparently from a member of the San community that inhabits Southern Africa, including the Kalahari region: http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-s...cle/484609
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
A "very large" lion from the Barbary region was said to have been presented to King Frederick I of Sweden in the 18th century, who then pitted it in a fight against a bear held by butchers in Stockholm: https://books.google.com/books?id=Io5NAA...on&f=false
Just as the winter fur of the Amur tiger may make it look bigger than a Bengal tiger (though this isn't necessarily true in the wild, but in captivity), with such thick and extensive manes and muscular physiques, even if these so-called "Barbary lions" aren't the biggest lions in this arena, they certainly do look formidable:
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