# Panthera leo is the scientific name for a lion. The lion is a member of the Felidae family and is one of the five big cats in the genus Panthera. The remaining four genus members are the tiger, jaguar, leopard, and snow leopard.
# The Lion is the second-largest living cat after the tiger with some males weighing more than 250 kg (550 lb).
# Lions are the tallest of all big cats. The shoulder height of the males can be up to 4 feet, while the females are just 3.3 feet.
# The lion is the only cat family member with a tasseled tail. Not only does the tassel look good, but it also relays messages like "come this way." When a lion is 5 to 7 months old, a tassel first appears.
# A typical head-to-body length is from 184 to 208 cm (72 to 82 in) for males and from 160 to 184 cm (63 to 72 in) for females.
# The average male lion weighs about 180 kg (400 lbs) while the average female lion weighs about 130 kg (290 lbs).
# By the time they're two years old, female lions reach two-thirds of their adult size.
# There's a black spot at the base of every lion's whisker. The patterns which make these spots are unique to each lion, similar to the fingerprint of a human. By looking at those patterns, scientists can tell lions apart.
# The lion has a special tongue that is rough enough to peel off the flesh from the skin of their prey. If a lion licked the back of a human hand just a few times, most of the skin will be peeled away.
# Lions have a well-developed sense of hearing that is enhanced by moving ears that can adjust to a sound's direction. A lion can hear the prey as far as a mile away.
# Lions can extend their jaws up to one foot, which is larger than the head of a human. Which gives them one of the animal kingdom's biggest mouths.
# The lion's claws are about the length of a human finger, three inches long.
# The Lions have incredible night vision. They're six times more sensitive to light than humans. This gives them a distinct advantage when hunting at night compared with other prey species.
# Lions are carnivorous, and they mostly hunt large animals. A female lion requires about 5 kg of meat and a male consumes about 7 kg of meat every day.
# Cats can't taste anything sweet, from lions and tigers right down to domestic felines.
# Lions usually eat boars, buffalos, deers, gazelles, impalas, warthogs, wildebeest, and zebras.
# The lioness (female lion) does 90 percent of the hunting.
# Lionesses are better hunters than males and do most of the hunting for the pride.
# A lion will scavenge food from other predators, like cheetahs, leopards, and spotted hyenas, when hungry.
# Lions should protect their dead prey from vultures, and hyenas in order to serve as another meal.
# Lionesses will often carry a small animal back alive, such as a baby antelope, so the cubs can practice their hunting skills.
# Lions drink water every day when they're close to a source of water. However, they can also go 4 to 5 days without water, because they get moisture from their prey's bodies.
# The paws of a lion do not touch the ground when they walk.
# A bite of a lion is 30 times stronger than a housecat's bite. In fact, at 600 psi, they have the weakest bite of all big cats. At 2000 psi, the jaguar has the strongest bite force of any big cat. The Nile crocodile at 5000 psi is the animal with the strongest bite of it all.
# The loose-skin belly of the African lion lets it be kicked by prey with little risk of injury.
# A lion's roar can be heard from 8 km (5.0 miles) away.
# A lion can run at a speed of 50 mph for short distances and can leap up to 36 feet.
# In a single day or night a lion can travel more than 12 miles.
# Lions usually stay inactive for twenty hours a day. They tend to walk for 2 hours and eat 50 minutes.
# Lions, unlike most other cats, are excellent swimmers.
# Lions have an interdigital scent gland between their toes, which is one of the reasons why they like to scratch trees. They not only sharpen and clean their claws, they also mark their territories.
# Of all big cats, African lions are the most social and live together in groups called "prides." A pride consists of about 15 lions.
# A lion's territory can range from 260 to 300 square kilometers.
# In a pride a dominant male has two jobs. First, he should mate with all the females in the pride and, second, he must defend their pride from other males who want to take over. Usually, male lions can keep control over a pride for 4 years.
# When they reach maturity male lions are often excluded from pride.
# While hunting, lionesses work together as a team and the entire pride shares the kill. But they follow an order: the males eat first, then the females, and lastly the cubs.
# When another male lion attacks or usurps a pride, he kills all the males and the cubs but not the females.
# Alpha-males are lions with black manes. The testosterone levels of a dark-maned lion are higher than those of other males, his cubs are more likely to survive and he is more likely to recover from wounds. Lionesses prefer a dark-maned mate.
# A good gauge of a male lion’s age is the darkness of his mane. The darker the mane, the older the lion.
# Lions cuddle to build and maintain relationships with one another.
# By the age of 3 or 4, lions are ready to mate.
# Lions have sex 20 to 40 times a day over a couple of days during a mating bout.
# A lion's gestation period is 4 months or 110 days. Lionesses like other cats prefer to hide away while giving birth.
# A lioness can give birth to 2 to 4 babies at a time and for the first six weeks keeps the baby cubs hidden. All the pride females take care of the cubs later.
# A baby lion is known as a cub, a whelp or a lionet.
# At birth a newborn cub weighs about 1.5 kilograms.
# For the first three months of birth, cubs are entirely dependent on their mommies for feeding and nourishment, after which they are introduced to meat.
# At the age of two a lion can roar.
# Only about one in eight male lions survive to adult years. A majority of lions die soon after being kicked out of their pride around the age of 2.
# The cubs are vulnerable to predators such as leopards, hyenas, and black-backed jackals and have a mortality rate of 65 to 70 percent.
# The life expectancy of a lion is significantly lower than that of the antelopes it chases.
# Lions are symbols of strength and courage and because of these characteristics have been celebrated throughout history. They are also symbols for royalty and stateliness, hence the phrase "king of the jungle."
# Even though the lion is known as "the king of the jungle," lions don't live in jungles. They live only in plains and in grasslands.
# A porcupine is able to fight off a pride of lions.
# During extreme drought conditions, lions will always survive by eating tsamma melons for moisture in the Kalahari Desert.
# A lioness adopted and protected a baby antelope in 2002 much to the surprise of conservationists. However, two weeks later, while the lioness was asleep, a male lion ate the baby antelope. The lioness seemed to be stricken with grief and walked around roaring in anger.
# An Ostrich kicks can kill a human and even a lion.
# Buffalo causes more deaths of lions than any other species of prey. Buffalo can weigh more than one ton and carry 5-foot horns on their head. Buffalo are fiercely protective and a lion will be charged.
# A "Leopon" is the result of a male leopard crossing with a lioness. The head is similar to a lion 's head whereas the rest of the body has similarities with the leopards.
# A male jaguar and lioness hybrid is known as a jaglion.
# The longest lion ever recorded (from head to tail) was 12 ft long.
# The heaviest lion ever record was in England's Colchester Zoo. He was named "Simba," and weighed 826 lbs.
# The earliest recorded images of lions dating back 32,000 years are found in the Chauvet Cave in southern France.
# The white lion is a rare morph, caused by a double recessive allele, with a genetic condition called leucism. This is not albino; it has normal eye and skin pigmentation.
# Ancient Egyptians venerated the lions because of their strength, power, and fierceness as their war deities. The famous sphinxes, in Egyptian culture, are just one of many mythical lion depictions.
# The body of a lion is the foundation of one of the largest single structures in Egypt, the Great Sphinx.
# In ancient Egypt, a lion was believed to guard the tunnel through which the sun passed through at night. In addition, two lions depicted the past and the present back to back.
# In ancient Greece mythology the most popular lion is the Nemean lion, which was killed by Heracles. It is represented in the Leo constellation, which is also a zodiac sign.
# In Roman times, lions were captured and released to fight against humans in gladiatorial arenas.
# In England, as part of "The Royal Menagerie," some kings kept lions in the Tower of London. In the 13th century, the animals were symbols of power and objects of curiosity.
# In alchemy, a green lion is often described as eating the sun, which symbolizes a gold-absorbing substance.
# The lion is listed on IUCN Red List as Vulnerable.
# More than a million lions roamed through regions covering Europe, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and India two thousand years ago. Lions numbered 450,000 in the 1940s. There are as few as 32,000 lions on Earth today.
# Asiatic lions, cousin of African lions were once found all the way to Europe from India. Currently, there are less than 300 left in the world. In India, Gir National Park is the only place they live in the wild.
# Tanzania is home to the largest lion population in Africa.
# The most dangerous land animal in Africa is the hippopotamus, and not the lion. Hippos kill around 500 people a year while lions kill about 100 people. However, the deadliest animal on the planet is probably much smaller than both: the mosquito, which causes 725,000 deaths annually.
# A female African lioness attacked a 29-year-old American woman through a jeep window in 2015 and killed her. Signs across the park warned tourists to keep the windows rolled up. Park officials decided not to execute the lioness after an investigation but instead moved her to a more private part of the park.
# In 1898, two Maneless 9 feet long Man-Eating Lions killed more than 135 workers on the Kenya-Uganda railway.
# 90 percent of free-roaming lions in Botswana are infected with FIV, the feline equivalent of human HIV.
# Tourists kill roughly 600 lions on trophy hunts each year. An estimated 60 percent of those "trophies" are shipped to the United States.
# Lions are the national animal of Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Togo, and England.
# The currency of Bulgaria is named Leva, meaning "lion" in Old Bulgarian.
# The planet has more lion statues than there are real wild lions.
# For its opening in 1893, the two bronze lions outside Chicago's Art Institute were made. The south lion is named (unofficially) "In an Attitude of Defiance,” and the north lion is named “On the Prowl."
# A lion is called Simba, in Swahili.
# A girl from Ethiopia was being brutally beaten by 7 men in 2005 when a pride of lions chased them away. They even stayed with her until help arrived.
# In 1953, a family in Texas had a pet lion named Blondie. They never had any incidents with her and was a beloved member of the family, she died of old age.
# A Turkish proverb states: "A lion sleeps in the heart of every brave man."
# Since 1917, the film company MGM used lions as a symbol. Many lions were present: Slats, Jackie, Telly, Coffee, Tanner, George, and Leo.
# Popular leaders have used lions for nicknames, including Richard the Lionheart; Robert III, "the Lion of Flanders," and Lala Lajpat Rai, "The Lion of Punjab."
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