Arguably the most potent symbol of animal strength ever to eside in the collective imagination, the black or golden-maned lion, the male of the species panthera leo, reigns over the Serengeti plains. His enormous head and stocky, relatively small body evoke the proportions of a pit bull and equip him to fight ferociously against other male lions. Scars in his facial fur and holes in his skull attest to the extraordinary power of his adversaries' jaws.

For twenty hours a day, he conserves his energy and looks good. The rest of the time, he snitches food killed by female lions, copulates, and fights to maintain his dominance. Should he lose a battle to a junior male, he will leave the pride and fulfill his days as a loner, hunting small game by the streams and watering holes of the savanna.

Photo by: Mary Loeken

A pride of lions typically comprises five to eighteen females, all related, their young, who are usually born in litters of three, and one to three males. Intensely territorial, lionesses defend their turf against other females, although they generally accept any male who passes the male initiation tests. Social hour for the girls occurs late in the afternoon, when lionesses suckle their cubs and socialize with each other. Theirs is a communal society, in which lionesses may nurture or even adopt each other's cubs.

The females hunt together, efficiently overcoming mid-sized game animals such as gazelle, zebra, wildebeest, impala, and reedbuck. They pull their prey to the ground with strong legs and paws, then bite and hold the animal's neck until it strangles. According to George Schaller, who observed several hundred lion kills in the Serengeti during the 1970s, Serengeti pride lions do not break the necks of their prey. Game hunter Frederick Selous, writing a hundred years earlier, reported that he had seen a lion kill buffalo in another part of Africa by seizing its nose with one paw and giving its neck a sudden wrench.

Pride lions hunt mostly at night, taking advantage of darkness to stalk through tall grass and underbrush, which they use expertly as cover. Even if they are too gorged to eat, lionesses are likely to kill animals that present themselves as easy prey. Lionesses do not take meat to male lions, but males aggressively help themselves. After the lions have finished eating, hyenas and vultures move in.

The life expectancy of a lion in the savanna is 10-15 years, but lions in captivity may live 23 years. A 1972 census of the Serengeti set the lion population at 1,000 individuals. This number is thought to have remained relatively constant due to the protected status of wildlife within the park.

The roar of the lion ranks as one of the most impressive sounds in nature. As Selous wrote, on a night of "crashing thunder peals and blinding flashes of lightning," when he sat "huddled up beneath the scanty shelter of a few boughs (for I never carried a tent with me in South Africa), the roaring of lions is not altogether a reassuring sound."