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Introduction

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Once it wandered freely in the parts of Africa, North America and Eurasia, fearsome for some but a beautiful animal for most has been shrinking down in population from last few decades, from about 50,000 in 1990's to a little over 10,000 now.

The only reason for the downfall of lion's population over last few decades is "Human Expansion". And the only way to protect this beautiful creature from extinction is that more and more people value this exquisite creature. So read this article to know a lot more about "The King Of Jungle".

^{Image Source: Pexels}

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Features

Male lion can be easily distinguished from female due to its mane(the huge hairs around its neck), with lion being only big cat to have this feature. The mane makes lions look bigger and more intimidating, and it is also a symbol of strength, health and maturity.

Female lions tends to prefer male lions with denser and darker mane. The color and spread of mane depends upon their testosterone levels. Huge maned lions live longer lives, have high strength, heal faster.

Lions have a height of about 4 feet, length of 5-8 feet and life span of 10-14 years. Generally female lions are a little bit shorter than males. They could run up to 50 mph(81km/hr) for short distances.

They have a very good night vision that is about 6 times better than humans, so they hunt in night a lot.

They communicate through roars, a lions roar can be heard from as far as 5 miles distance.

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Pride

Lions are very social animals opposed to other big cats. The group of lions is called pride. Generally in a pride, there is about 1-3 males with 7-10 females and a few cubs. The strength of pride depends upon the resources of the land i.e the water, prey, and the sway of land. With smaller resources, the strength decreases.

The male rules the pride and protects it from intruders like hyenas and  other male lions. The dominant female gives birth to cubs in pride. While all the females are loving and caring and share the cubs of others with equal love and also feed them and let them suckle to give them a chance to survive.

The cubs are born almost blind, so they have a high mortality rate of about 60-70%. When lions are at the age of 1.5 to 2 years, males are expelled from the pride to live on their own and make their own pride when they become strong enough. Female cubs live throughout their life in the same pride.

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Hunting

While the male is the head of pride, he seldom participates in hunting and 90-95% of hunting is done by females only. Still male gets the first share in the prey, then females and at last the cubs.

A female needs 5 kg of meat a day while a male needs 7 kg of meat.

The hunting is done in a very effective way, female lions fanning out, forming a semi circle, where the weakest female is at the ends, driving the prey towards center to the strongest female so that she could kill it by biting it on its neck.

Their prey generally includes antelopes, zebras, buffaloes, giraffes, while some times due to scarcity of food, they eat mice, rodents, lizards, birds tortoises. 

They usually like gorging, and then sleeping for 16-20 hours. They might drink daily but can remain without water for up to 4-5 days.

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Lions were considered a symbol of bravery in ancient Egyptian, with the belief that the person killing a lion gets his strength, and the head of lion hanging in the house as the status of royalty.

A few decades back, it was killed in huge numbers for the sole purpose of fun as in hunting ducks now.

These iconic creatures who once ruled from Southern part of Africa to Northern part of India are at the verge of extinction by 2020.

African lions are listed as vulnerable by International Union of Conservation of Nature(IUCN) and listed in red list of threatened species.

Asiatic lions are almost on the verge of extinction with about only a few hundred of them left only in Gir forest reserve Gujarat, India.

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Do share your love for this iconic creature through your comments.

If you want to fall in love with nature follow

@nature-trail

^{Factual Information Source: Here}

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