A pride of lions consists of a single mature male, a bunch of lionesses and some lion cubs. The Big Papa's job is to protect his pride from predators. If another male comes to challenge him, he must fight to maintain his position in the pride. Lions fight to the death and if a new male comes into the pride, the cubs are all killed, so that he can start his new family. Since a nursing mother cannot get pregnant, he must make sure her cubs are dead before he can start mating with her. Delightful, eh? This lioness was hidden amongst the bushes with her days old cub. We couldn't photograph the beauty of what we saw, but it's certainly a wonderful memory. Kind of reminds me of how protective my mum is over her little cubs!
The lionesses do the hunting. They hunt in the evening and bask in the sun or lay in the shade during the day. The adult male basks in the sun all day as well. He pretty much just waits for his lionesses to bring in the kill and gets first choice on the meat. After his meal, he may go on a walk to get a drink of water. That normally wears him out, so he may just sleep there the rest of the day. The pride we saw was without its adult male - he was probably napping elsewhere. The adult male below was without a pride, most likely hunting with his brother.
The lionesses do the hunting. They hunt in the evening and bask in the sun or lay in the shade during the day. The adult male basks in the sun all day as well. He pretty much just waits for his lionesses to bring in the kill and gets first choice on the meat. After his meal, he may go on a walk to get a drink of water. That normally wears him out, so he may just sleep there the rest of the day. The pride we saw was without its adult male - he was probably napping elsewhere. The adult male below was without a pride, most likely hunting with his brother. 
Once young males reach maturity, they go off on their own and hunt for themselves until they can take over a pride. These guys were pretty old (judging by the color of their manes), so Otete thought that they were probably brothers who had been kicked out of their pride when they reached maturity and hung out ever since. If we were a family of lions, it would be like kicking Mike and Pat out of the fam and them kickin' it together for the rest of their lives. 
The life of a lion doesn't look too bad, does it? They are incredibly lazy animals. Check out this lion we saw - definitely my favorite!
1 comment:
delightful!
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