A Brief History
On August 10, 2024, we celebrated another World Lion Day, a day to educate people about the great feline hunter and support conservation of the species and its habitat. Of course, we are talking about Panthera leo, the big cat native to Africa and India.
Digging Deeper
Yes, they have lions in India! Back in the more recent Stone Age, lions were far more widely distributed, across much of Eurasia and North Africa as well as Sub-Saharan Africa and India.
Other critters such as the “Mountain Lion” of North and South America are not actually real lions. In fact, the Mountain Lion, Puma concolor, is not even closely related to the real Lion. Needless to say, the Lionfish is a fish, not a cat at all, and the Sea Lion is not an aquatic lion, but a type of Seal.
Despite their nickname as “King of the Jungle,” Lions do not really live in jungles, but mostly grasslands and shrublands.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What is your favorite big cat?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Ham, Anthony. The Last Lions of Africa: Stories From the Frontline in the Battle to Save a Species. Allen & Unwin, 2021.
Packer, Craig. The Lion: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation of an Iconic Species. Princeton University Press, 2023.
The featured image in this article, a JPG preview of this WEBM file by Bernard DUPONT of a lion (Panthera leo) walking on the road in S21 Road West of Lower Sabie, Kruger National Park, South Africa, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
