95 Fun Facts About Lions

What kills most adult lions in the wild?

Humans and other lions account for most adult deaths, so a wild male rarely lives past 12 and a lioness reaches about 16, while zoo lions can live into their twenties.

What is the primary role of male lions in a pride?

Defending territory is the males' main job: they patrol the edges of the pride's range, roar and fight off rival males, while the lionesses do most of the hunting.

What did a study of lions in US zoos find gives males longer, thicker manes?

Cold temperatures: comparing lions in 17 zoos across the United States, researchers tied up to half of a mane's length and density to climate, since a thick mane holds in heat like a scarf.

How do lions usually get within range of their prey?

Stalking close under cover makes up for poor stamina: several lions may creep to within about 30 metres from different angles before a short rush, and many kills come near cover or at night.

From how far away can a lion's roar be heard?

About 5 miles: a roar carries roughly 8 km, so pride members who have split into subgroups across a large range can keep in contact, and rival lions hear that the land is occupied.

Where does a lioness usually give birth?

A hidden den, such as a thicket, reed-bed or cave, keeps the newborn cubs out of sight; their mother only brings them back to meet the pride after several weeks.

When new males take over a lion pride, what do they usually do to the young cubs?

Kill them: a lioness does not become fertile again until her cubs mature or die, so killing the young lets the new males father their own sooner, though mothers who band together sometimes fight them off.

Among living cats, only which species grows larger than the lion?

Tiger: a male lion weighs 150-250 kg and is second in size only to the tiger, yet under the skin the two are so alike that only experts can tell their bodies apart.

Male lions with which mane trait have greater reproductive success and hold their place in a pride longer?

Darker manes: a long-term Serengeti study found dark-maned males were better fed, held their place longer and raised more surviving cubs, but paid for it by running hotter in the hot months.

In which Indian state can you find the last remaining wild Asiatic lions?

Gujarat: the Gir Forest and the countryside around it are the Asiatic lion's only wild home, and the state has fought for years against sending any of its lions to a second site in Madhya Pradesh.

Cubs born together in a pride suckle from whom?

Any nursing lioness: after pregnancies of about 110 days, pride lionesses often give birth together and suckle one another's cubs, so the young grow at the same pace with a more equal chance of survival.

The Serengeti National Park, where scientists have tracked lion prides for decades, is in which country?

Tanzania: the Serengeti's closely monitored lions were struck in 1994 by canine distemper, caught from the domestic dogs of nearby villages, and about a third of them died.

Lion cubs are born with what markings, which fade as they grow up?

Dark spots: the rosettes fade as a cub grows up, though some never quite vanish and can still be made out on the legs and underparts of adults.

What may be hidden inside the dark tuft at the tip of some lions' tails?

A small hard spur lies hidden in the tuft of some lions' tails, and nobody knows what it is for; the tuft itself is missing at birth and only grows in during a cub's first months.

What is the IUCN Red List conservation status of the African lion?

Vulnerable is the listing for lions as a whole, but West Africa's lions, put at about 400 by a 2014 study, are rated Critically Endangered.

As of the mid-2020s, roughly how many lions are estimated to remain in the wild?

About 20,000 wild lions are thought to remain: a species that once roamed most of Africa and parts of Asia and Europe has vanished from more than nine-tenths of its historic range.

Which famous lion was controversially killed by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015?

Cecil, a black-maned Hwange National Park lion wearing a research collar, was shot with an arrow by American dentist Walter Palmer in July 2015 and killed hours later; Palmer was never charged.

How do lions in a pride typically greet one another?

Rubbing heads is the pride's greeting: two lions nuzzle foreheads, faces and necks with their tails looped in the air, most often when they meet again after time apart.

What usually happens to male lions at around two or three years old?

They are driven out of the pride once they are big enough to rival the resident males, then wander, often with brothers or cousins, for years before they can win a pride of their own.

Which Egyptian goddess has the head of a lioness?

Sekhmet: in one myth the sun god Ra sent the lioness goddess to punish humanity, then stopped the slaughter by pouring out beer dyed red like blood, which she drank until she was too drunk to go on.

The Lion of Judah was the hereditary title of which country's Solomonic emperors?

Ethiopia: the Solomonic dynasty claimed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba through the tribe of Judah, and Haile Selassie styled himself Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Which king, crowned in 1189, was called 'the Lionheart' for his reputation as a warrior?

Richard I earned the name Coeur de Lion as a commander, yet he spent very little of his ten-year reign in his own kingdom, passing most of it on crusade, in captivity or at war in France.

Three lions appear on the coat of arms of which country's football (soccer) team?

England: the three lions come from the medieval royal arms, though heralds long called the beasts leopards, a term for their walking, face-on pose rather than the species.

Which real-life lioness is the heroine of Joy Adamson's memoir 'Born Free'?

Elsa was an orphaned cub raised by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy; her two sisters went to Rotterdam Zoo, while Elsa was taught to hunt and released into the wild.

Simba, the hero of The Lion King, takes his name from the word for 'lion' in which language?

Swahili: simba means lion, and the film's motto hakuna matata, 'no worries', is Swahili too, though the chant that opens 'Circle of Life' is sung in Zulu.

Whose palace gates were guarded by winged, human-headed lions?

The Assyrians: pairs of lamassu, winged bulls or lions with human heads, flanked palace gates at Nimrud, Khorsabad and Nineveh; the winged human-headed motif is older, recorded at Ebla around 3000 BC.

The Tsavo man-eaters were a pair of lions infamous for killing railway workers in which country?

Kenya: two maneless males preyed on workers building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in 1898 until engineer John Henry Patterson shot them; he claimed 135 victims, but later research put the toll nearer 35.

Which type of habitat do African lions primarily occupy?

Grasslands and savannas: for all the talk of the 'king of the jungle', lions favour open plains, scrub and open woodland, and they are absent from the moist tropical forests around the equator.

Lionesses in a pride pool their young cubs into a group known as what?

A crèche: mothers whose litters arrive close together keep the cubs in one group and spend most of their time beside it, and cubs born in step like this are the likeliest to survive.

Panthera spelaea, an extinct Ice Age cat that roamed from Europe across Siberia, is commonly called what?

Cave lion: Ice Age artists painted it on cave walls in France, and their pictures suggest that the males, unlike today's lions, had little or no mane.

The Barbary lion, now extinct in the wild, was native to which region?

North Africa: the Barbary lion ranged from Morocco to Egypt until firearms and bounties wiped it out, and genetic tests show it barely differs from the Asiatic lion.

Which physical feature sets Asiatic lions apart from African lions?

A belly skin fold running lengthwise is the Asiatic lion's hallmark; because every wild one lives in a single population in western India, one epidemic or forest fire could threaten them all.

Which cat of the Americas shares the lion's genus, Panthera?

Jaguar: Panthera holds the lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar and snow leopard, while the cougar and the cheetah, big as they are, sit on other branches of the cat family.

A liger is a cross between which parents?

Lion father, tiger mother: the liger exists only in captivity and outgrows both parents, whereas the tigon, sired by a tiger, grows no bigger than its parents.

What are a lion's meat-slicing cheek teeth called?

Carnassials: an upper and a lower cheek tooth slide past each other like scissor blades to shear through flesh; an adult lion has 30 teeth in total.

White lions are not albinos, so which rare genetic condition gives them their pale coats?

Leucism whitens the coat but leaves the eyes and skin normally coloured; so many white lions were taken from South Africa's Timbavati area from the 1970s that none lived wild until reintroductions in 2004.

Which animal completes Africa's 'Big Five' alongside the lion, elephant, rhinoceros and Cape buffalo?

Leopard: big-game hunters coined 'Big Five' for the five African animals they found hardest to hunt on foot.

Lions often steal kills from which rival predator, long miscast as a mere scavenger?

Spotted hyena: hyenas are capable hunters, and in the Ngorongoro Crater researchers found the lions living largely on kills stolen from them rather than the other way round.

Though the decline is not fully understood, which threat is considered the greatest cause for concern for Africa's lions?

Habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict top the list; livestock losses to lions fall sharply where herders keep animals in improved enclosures.

How do lions mark their territory?

By spraying urine and scraping the ground: males douse bushes and trees along their range and rake the soil with their hind paws, which carry scent glands of their own.

Which South African sanctuary owner is known as the 'Lion Whisperer' for his close bonds with lions?

Kevin Richardson has slept beside, fed and lived with lions he has known since they were cubs, rejecting the idea that a lion must be dominated; his films made him a YouTube star.

What are lions without a pride, usually young males roaming in pairs or small groups, called?

Nomads range far and wide, often following migrating herds, until they are strong enough to challenge the resident males of a pride or to found a new one with wandering females.

Which big cat cannot roar, although it has the same flexible throat bone as the lion?

Snow leopard: its hyoid is only partly ossified, like a lion's, but its vocal folds are too short to resist the airflow, so it cannot produce a roar.

The Njombe man-eating lions of the 1930s and 1940s are blamed for roughly how many deaths?

About 1,500: the Njombe pride is blamed for up to 1,500 deaths before game warden George Rushby hunted the lions down, a toll that rests on his own account; locals blamed a witch doctor.

How are the adult lionesses in a pride usually connected to one another?

They are close relatives: a pride is built around mothers, daughters, sisters and cousins who stay together for life, while the unrelated adult males come and go every few years.

Which naturalist's study The Serengeti Lion won the 1973 National Book Award in Science?

George Schaller based the book on three years among the Serengeti's prides; an Alaskan expedition he had joined earlier helped bring about what is now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Skulls found at which royal site proved medieval kings once kept Barbary lions?

The Tower of London: two lion skulls excavated there in the 1930s were DNA-tested and dated to the 13th to 15th centuries, the age of the royal menagerie begun under King John.

The much-filmed 'Marsh Pride' of lions lives in which Kenyan wildlife area?

Masai Mara: the BBC's Big Cat Diary filmed the pride around the reserve's Musiara marsh, and in December 2015 eight of its lions were poisoned, three of them fatally.

Which London department store sold the lion cub Christian to two Australians in 1969?

Harrods: the Knightsbridge store's exotic-animals department sold the cub to John Rendall and Ace Bourke, who kept him at their King's Road furniture shop until George Adamson rewilded him at Kora; their 1971 reunion later went viral.

MGM's lion mascot was chosen in 1916 by publicist Howard Dietz as a tribute to which university?

Columbia: Dietz, a former student, borrowed the lion from his university's mascot, and the cat outlived Goldwyn Pictures to front MGM after the 1924 merger.

What set Slats, MGM's 1920s logo lion, apart?

Never roared: Slats, born at Dublin Zoo, fronted MGM's black-and-white films from 1924 to 1928 and simply looked around; his successor Jackie was the first MGM lion to be heard.

The Lion Capital of Ashoka, India's state emblem, crowned a pillar at which site of the Buddha's first sermon?

Sarnath: the capital fell from its pillar and lay buried until a 1904-05 excavation; the broken column still stands where it was found, and the four lions sit in the museum beside the site.

Who urged the Lions Clubs in 1925 to become 'Knights of the Blind'?

Helen Keller, addressing the Lions' 1925 convention at Cedar Point, Ohio, asked them to become 'Knights of the Blind in the crusade against darkness', setting the organization's long focus on sight.

The 40,000-year-old Lion-man figurine from Hohlenstein-Stadel was carved from what?

Mammoth ivory: the Lowenmensch, found in pieces in a German cave in 1939, was rebuilt several times as more fragments turned up and now stands about 31 cm tall in Museum Ulm.

The Lion of Lucerne honours Swiss Guards killed in 1792 defending which Paris palace?

The Tuileries: hundreds of Swiss Guards died when revolutionaries stormed the palace on 10 August 1792; Bertel Thorvaldsen designed the dying lion, which was hewn into the wall of a former sandstone quarry in 1820-21.

Who called the Lion of Lucerne 'the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world'?

Mark Twain wrote the line in A Tramp Abroad (1880), adding that the lion is right to lie in a quiet woodland nook, because lions die in such places and not on granite pedestals in public squares.

The Lion's Mound, a man-made hill topped by an iron lion, overlooks which Belgian battlefield?

Waterloo: King William I of the Netherlands ordered the mound in 1820 for the spot where his son, the Prince of Orange, was thought to have been wounded, and its earth was scraped from the ridge the allied army had held.

The 'Sickle' of stars forming Leo's head is often said to look like a backwards what?

A question mark: six stars trace the Sickle, which outlines the Lion's head and mane, and each November the Leonid meteors appear to streak out from beside one of its stars.

Which star in Leo did Babylonian astronomers place 'at the breast of the Lion'?

Regulus, Alpha Leonis, was the Babylonians' king star at the Lion's breast; it lies closer to the ecliptic than any other bright star, so the Moon regularly passes in front of it.

In a pair of Chinese guardian lions, what does the male traditionally rest a paw on?

An embroidered ball sits under the male's right front paw, while the female, otherwise identical, holds down a cub; the pair stand for yang and yin, guarding the building and those inside it.

The Southern Lion dance, the style best known outside China, originated in which province?

Guangdong: the Cantonese lion has a single horn, and one legend says the dance began when a village drove off the monster Nian, while another credits a dream of the Qianlong Emperor.

Which Asian city-state's name means 'Lion City', after a beast a prince is said to have glimpsed there?

Singapore: the Malay Annals say the prince Sang Nila Utama took an animal he saw on the island for a lion and named his city Singapura, though lions never lived there and the beast may have been a tiger.

On Sri Lanka's flag, what does the golden lion hold in its right forepaw?

A sword: the lion with its kastane stands for the Sinhalese majority, which is why two stripes were set beside it to represent the island's largest minorities.

C.S. Lewis's Aslan takes his name from the word for 'lion' in which language?

Turkish: aslan is the Turkish word for lion, and Lewis, who made him the one character to appear in all seven Narnia books, capitalised 'Lion' because Aslan stands in for Christ.

Who played the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz?

Bert Lahr, a vaudeville and Broadway comic, wore a costume made of real lion skin and fur, which grew unbearably hot under the bright lights that Technicolor filming needed.

In the 2016 film Lion, what tool does Saroo use to hunt for his lost Indian hometown?

Google Earth: Saroo, lost on a train as a small boy and adopted in Tasmania, scans its satellite images until he recognises home; the title comes from his real name, Sheru, which means lion.

The Lions NFL team took its name in 1934 as a nod to which other local club?

The Detroit Tigers: when the Portsmouth Spartans moved to Detroit in 1934 they took a big-cat name to match the city's baseball club, and they have hosted a Thanksgiving Day game since that first season.

Roman lawyers used 'societas leonina', from Aesop's lion's-share fable, to mean what?

A one-sided partnership, where one party takes the gains and the other bears the losses: in the fable the lion keeps every portion of the shared kill, and Phaedrus opened his version 'Partnership with the mighty is never trustworthy'.

In the Book of Daniel, which ruler reluctantly has Daniel thrown into the lions' den?

Darius the Mede was tricked by Daniel's rivals into banning prayer to anyone but himself for thirty days; when Daniel emerged unharmed, the king had the plotters thrown to the lions instead.

In the classical tale, what does the runaway slave Androcles remove from a lion's paw?

A large thorn: Androcles pulls it from the lion's paw while sheltering in its cave, and the grateful beast later spares him in the arena; the earliest surviving version is in Aulus Gellius's 2nd-century Attic Nights.

Who sculpted the four bronze lions guarding Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square?

Edwin Landseer was best known as a painter of animals; commissioned in 1858, he was held up by ill health and a wait for casts of a real lion, and the bronzes were not installed until 1867.

Hercules, a 418 kg liger Guinness recognised in 2013 as the largest living cat, was kept in which country?

The United States: Hercules was kept at Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina; ligers, bred only in captivity, grow larger than either parent species.

Frasier the 'Sensuous Lion', sire of 35 cubs in California, was bought in 1970 from what?

A bankrupt Mexican circus: Lion Country Safari in Irvine bought the toothless, roughly 19-year-old lion in 1970; he got all six of his lionesses pregnant within weeks and became a national celebrity before dying in 1972.

The bronze winged Lion of Venice was carried off as war booty after whose 1797 conquest of the city?

Napoleon Bonaparte had it shipped to Paris; it came home in 1815 broken into about 20 pieces, and a 2024 analysis of its metal suggests Venice's emblem was probably made in Tang-dynasty China.

Which Swedish king, 'the Lion of the North', fell at Lützen in 1632?

Gustavus Adolphus was killed as his troops fell back, yet his army rallied and won the field; Swedes still mark the day, 6 November, with a pastry named after him.

Who gave the lion its first scientific name, Felis leo, in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus filed the lion under Felis, the same genus he gave the house cat; it only became Panthera leo after Lorenz Oken coined a separate genus for the big cats in 1816.

What are the Ngorongoro Crater's lions known to scientists for?

Heavy inbreeding: the crater's walls act as a natural enclosure, and the few outside males that do get in are usually chased off by the residents, so new bloodlines rarely arrive.

Kimba the White Lion, known in Japan as Jungle Emperor, was created by which manga artist?

Osamu Tezuka, the 'god of manga', created Jungle Emperor, serialised 1950-54 and animated in 1965; its similarities to Disney's 1994 The Lion King prompted a protest letter signed by hundreds of Japanese cartoonists.

The Lion and Sun emblem long appeared on the flag of which country?

Iran: the Lion and Sun stayed on the flag until the 1979 Islamic Revolution swept it away, yet opponents of the Islamic Republic still fly it today.

Which carmaker's lion logo was first trademarked in 1858, originally for saw blades?

Peugeot's early lion walked on an arrow to symbolise the speed, strength and flexibility of the blades, decades before the family built cars.

Which disease, caught from the buffalo they prey on, has spread through Kruger National Park's lions?

Tuberculosis: the bovine form took hold in Kruger's buffalo and passed to the lions that eat them, and a 1993-2008 study found it in 72 percent of lions tested in the south of the park against 19 percent in the north.

Once large prey is down, how does a lion usually kill it?

A clamping bite to the throat or muzzle does the work: rather than a quick slash, the lion grips and holds on until its prey is strangled, which with a large animal can take minutes.

Which pharaoh's commemorative scarabs boast that he killed more than 100 lions in his first ten years as king?

Amenhotep III issued the lion-hunt scarabs around 1380 BC, claiming to have shot the animals with his own arrows; the tally is read as either 102 or 110.

In heraldry, what is a lion rearing on its hind legs with forepaws raised called?

Rampant: the lion rampant is Scotland's royal banner, and because a 1672 act restricts its official use to the monarch's representatives, a linen merchant was once fined for printing it on bedspreads.

In which Botswana national park have large prides been seen hunting young elephants?

Chobe is noted for its vast elephant herds; lions usually leave elephants alone, but the park's big prides prey on calves and juveniles and, in exceptional cases, animals up to about 15 years old.

In 1962 the Ngorongoro Crater's lions were ravaged by an outbreak of what?

Stable flies: rains through the 1962 dry season let the biting flies breed in swarms, leaving the crater's lions emaciated and covered in bloody sores, and only a dozen or so were left.

Wild lions survived in which European country into classical times?

Greece: Herodotus wrote that lions attacked the camels of Xerxes' invading army there in 480 BC; they had grown rare within two centuries and died out under the Roman Empire.

Which 1996 film, starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas, dramatised the Tsavo man-eaters?

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) cast Val Kilmer as Patterson and Michael Douglas as a fictional hunter, Remington; the title uses the names Tsavo workers reportedly gave the two lions.

The skins of the Tsavo man-eaters were sold in the 1920s to which institution?

Field Museum, Chicago: after a quarter of a century as Patterson's floor rugs, the skins were sold to the museum, which rebuilt them as the standing and crouching mounts still on display.

Gir National Park, the Asiatic lion's last refuge, was created on land that had been what?

A prince's private hunting ground: by 1900 the Gir forest held India's last lions, and they survived because the Nawab of Junagadh protected them on his own reserve, which became the park in 1965.

Kuno National Park, readied for Asiatic lions, instead received which big cat in 2022?

Cheetah: India's Supreme Court ordered lions moved to Kuno in 2013, but the state that holds them never sent any, and in September 2022 eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia took their place.

Disney's The Lion King borrows its plot chiefly from which Shakespeare play?

Hamlet was the main model: a prince whose uncle murders his father the king and seizes the throne, then returns to avenge him; the filmmakers also cited the Bible's Joseph and Moses stories.

Who voiced the scheming Scar in the 1994 animated The Lion King?

Jeremy Irons had just won an Oscar for Reversal of Fortune, and Scar's line 'You have no idea' is borrowed from that film; Jim Cummings says he sang the last third of 'Be Prepared' after Irons's voice gave out.

Before Elton John, which act did Tim Rice invite to write the songs for The Lion King?

ABBA: Tim Rice first approached Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, his Chess collaborators, but Andersson was tied up with the musical Kristina fran Duvemala, so Rice turned to Elton John.

A study of 1,000 lion attacks in East Africa found them surging in the weeks after what?

The full moon: in the days after it the Moon rises later each evening, leaving the hours just after sunset dark, and those were the hours when people were still about and most victims were seized.