The Lion is the king of the African carnivores on the Sahara Plains. Fully grown males usually weigh 416 lb or 189 kg. The record size for a lion has been 572 lb or 260 Kg.

The Lion's coat is a tawny color with white underparts often faintly spotted (especially in East Africa); black tail tuft, ear backs, and lips; mane individually varies from blond to black. Lion cubs are often woolly with grayish, have spotted coats, and change into their adult coat by 3 months of age.

Lions are often found in the Sub Saharan Africa. Unlike some people thing, lions do not live in the jungle or rainforest. Lion's live wherever there are medium and large sized herbivores. Lions feed on zebras, gazelles and other animals. The Lion is still the most abundant large predator after the spotted hyena in the savanna plains ecosystems.

ACTIVITIES: Lions spend 20 hours out of 24 conserving energy, becoming active in late afternoon when mothers retrieve, suckle, and socialize with young cubs and one anothe. The Lion hunts early and late nights, carrying over for a couple hours after daybreak. Lions can become active any time, day or night, hungry or gorged, if prey are an easy catch.














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THE FEMALE PRIDE: The family units of lion society are prides of related females, each pride residing in a traditional home range/territory. Male offspring have to leave by 2.5 years. Adult males must compete with other males to gain custody of a pride. The number of adult females in a pride is adjusted to seasons of minimum prey availability and tends to be consistent over time. Surplus females have to disperse; if the membership falls below capacity, subadult nomads are accepted in the absence of recruits from within the pride.

Large prides, which can include up to 40 lions, may never assemble in one place. Members come and go unpredictably, alone and in groups, typically numbering 3 to 5 lions. There is no rank hierarchy among females and no 2 are likely to be found together more than half the time. But all residents are acquainted and whenever they meet, the lion greeting ceremony reaffirms their social ties. A lion without the self assurance to meet and greet sends a signal that it doesn't belong and is treated as an intruder. Each sex defends the part of the pride range in current use against intruders of the same gender.