Southern Africa (and London)-2104: 52. Days 16-17 (Aug 31-Sep 1)

The lion is known as the king of the jungle and a lion sighting on at least one of the game drives is often seen as making or breaking a safari. If that is the test (and I’m not one who would single out the lion in that role), then our safari was doubly successful. On two successive days we came across lions – both times on the afternoon/evening game drive, the first time more than midway through the drive and the second time early in the drive.

Let’s look first at some discussion of lions in general and then look at the different times we saw lions.

In each case, we did not see single lions but rather prides. Lions, at least females and cubs, live in groups. These are said to vary in size from 3 to 40 although ours both were in the 10 to15-lion range. The pride generally hunts, raises cubs, and defends territory together. The male’s job is primarily to defend territory, especially against other male lions. And to erase any question that this is primarily to ensure the continuation of the male’s genetic line, consider that there is usually only one although sometimes two dominant males at the head of the pride, and when the male shifts (as it can every 3 or more years), the new male will usually kill all the cubs of the pride. Another fact related to this behavior is that female lions do not usually become fertile and receptive until their cub matures or dies (and some 80% of cubs die before become full grown, usually as prey to other animals.

The female lions are usually related and they give birth at about the same time. This permits a cub to nurse from any available female. A female will normally remain a member of the pride for life. The females do most of the hunting – often in small groups – although when prey is obtained, the male eats first, then the females, and lastly the cubs. Despite its reputation as a fierce hunter, roughly half of a lion’s food is taken as carrion.

The lion and the hyena tend to compete for the same prey (and carrion) in the same areas. In some areas lions are more successful at hunting, while in other areas hyenas dominate.

There is some controversy as to the extent of true subspecies among lions (which currently are found only in sub-Saharan Africa and in one location in India). The subspecies in the Kruger area is known as the Transvaal or Southeast African Lion.

The first group of lions that we came across were probably a pride of lions but I would call them a pile (or perhaps several piles) of lions. It was early evening, around 5:15 and the lions were doing what lions generally do except at night – sleeping. And many of them were sleeping piled on top of each other, and seemingly paying little attention to the smelly green animal (i.e, our vehicle) that was nearing them. I took a great many photos of this first pride and have with a show of great restraint (ysr) managed to reduced it to a much smaller group of lion photos, presented here without further commentary. Toward the end of our time with these lions, a few of them started waking up and walking around, but still paying us little or no attention.

Two Sleeping Lions

A Pile of Lions

How Undignified

Still Asleep

And Still Asleep

One is Finally Up and About

Morning Stretch

Walking Off

When we came across the second pride early in our afternoon game drive the following day, there was a little more activity, although not much. Some of the lions were sleeping but some were awake and appeared to be feeding although we were not able to see on what. Our driver and spotter both thought it was a cape buffalo they were eating and the previous day, in this same general area, we had seen a very old cape buffalo away from the general herd. We don’t know if this was the animal that was killed and was being eaten but the best guess of our driver and spotter was that it was.

Again, I need to emphasize that there appeared to be some feeding going on but this was an assumption and we did not see any such feeding – and thus there are no pictures of this. But here are the pictures of the second pride.