World Lion Day

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm rich Schwartz. What is the world?

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Speaker 2: I'm Marco Wentz.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal facts. This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and international nonprofit conservation organization which oversees the San Diego Zoo and Safari bark.

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Speaker 1: Thick.

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Speaker 4: Last Saturday, August tenth was Worldline Day, and it's a day where around the world we raise awareness of the many conservation efforts going on for lions and of course lion habitat.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Marco.

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Speaker 3: And before we jump too far into this episode about lions, I want to remind any listeners who did not hear the episode we did last year where we interviewed the founder and director of a wast of Lions to go back and listen to that episode, Season two, Episode two with the title Maiinless and Prideless Kenya's Solitary Lions. It is a very specific look into the lions in and around the Samburu National Preserve and Kenya, and it's honestly fascinating.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was.

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Speaker 1: Such a good episode.

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Speaker 4: I mean they were literally recording in their tent, right, that was awesome. And those particular lines, I mean they are so unique in their behavior, and I mean the fact that the males don't even have mains.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Well, in this episode, though, we're going to zoom out out as far as we can to be less specific about a region and discuss some amazing wildlife lion facts.

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Speaker 4: And for you, our listeners, since we don't have a guest for this particular episode, we thought it'd be kind of fun for Rick and I to swap out some of our favorite lion facts and conservation information.

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Speaker 3: All right, Marco, I will let you start it off. Hit us with one of your favorite lion facts.

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Speaker 2: Now, you know, friend, I'm a huge fan of lines.

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Speaker 4: I mean, they're not a bird, but yes, they're not a bird, but I will say they're a carnivore, and of all the wildlife out there, it's always been a fan of carnivores, right, And being from a this is kind of signo being from a Mexican family, the nuances.

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Speaker 2: Of being Machi smoll you know, the dominant man.

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Speaker 4: You know, a lot of times I remember having conversations and my father in particular about a lion and what it represents and strength and power, which.

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Speaker 2: I totally get.

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Speaker 4: But I've always loved to remind them too that you know, it's not really the male lion who really is the core of the social structure of this particular species, right, And his mind was just blown. It's the females, right, It's all about the females. Yes, the male line has a very important role, protecting the prime, keeping the territory nice and safe, sometimes even helping bring down much larger prey. But in reality, you know, this pride, this social group, it's all tied in with females, sisters, granddaughters, all working together to help keeping this vital pride, this family structure in play.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: I just think that's incredible.

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Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I love it.

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Speaker 3: And to roll into that a little further, I think what's fascinating is of all the cat species.

00:02:46
Speaker 1: And I have loved cats my life.

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Speaker 3: I've had oh yeah, I've had cats in my life ever since I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: I've worked with cat species.

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Speaker 3: I've worked with tigers, I've worked with small cats like oslots and servals, I've worked with jaguars and leopards, and what's fascinating is lions are the only one. Like you said, they live in a pride or a social group. Now, a pride can have anywhere from three to thirty lions made up of the lionesses like you said, the mothers, the sisters, cousins, granddaughters, and their cubs, along with a few unrelated males. And to go further into that, the lion pride has a very close bond. They rarely will ever accept an outsider into the pride. However, unrelated males usually will only stay in the pride for a few years, but the older lionesses will stay for life. So again kind of going back to what you're saying with that not officially a matriarchal setup, but that core group there. And as we learned during the episode that you mentioned from last year in dry areas with less food where we were talking about the lions in the Samburu area of Kenya, the prides are smaller and sometimes lions can even end up being solitary, but in habitats with more food and water, prides can have easily four to eight adult lionesses with all their offspring, even one or two adult males, bringing the numbers anywhere from ten to thirty in that group.

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Speaker 2: Wow, can even have like ten thirty.

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Speaker 1: Different right exactly.

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Speaker 3: But then what I also find fascinating to add on to that a little bit more is the fact that Ian territories where we see lions living today, you also have solitary cats like leopards, so that again it brings that sort of contrasts. Well, wait a minute, if being in a pride.

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Speaker 1: Helps with survival, why don't other cats do this, especially in the same habitat.

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Speaker 3: And honestly, from whatever, no one really knows for sure why lions have created the pride social group where other cat species like the leopard, in the same habitat remains solitary. But what we do know is that living in a pride allows the females to share cub rearing responsibilities, allows for a group hunting which can be very effective, and the males can better protect their offspring and thus keeping their genetics going for more generations.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean one hundred percent.

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Speaker 4: And to me, it's getting me thinking about adaptability too, right, I mean yeah, again, Like I love carnivores and one of my favorite things about carnivors, and it can be disputed with herbivores as well, is the need for being intelligent and adaptable. I mean, you are quite literally putting yourself in physical harm when you're trying to capture your prey. I mean, an animal is not gonna sit there and let itself just get gobbled up, right, It's going to fight back, It's going.

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Speaker 2: To run away.

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Speaker 4: So I mean a lion, a carnival really needs to think about what they're about to do. And when I think of that, I think of lines and that adaptability. And you just mentioned what a solitary line to thirty lines together. That is crazy when you think about that adaptability. And these lions have moved from Africa to Europe. People forget that there are lines in India and.

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Speaker 2: Asia as well.

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Speaker 4: Right before this episode, you and I were just talking about these adaptabilities and I had mentioned that I was reading that in South America. Now mountain lions is an example, right, and call them Buma's mountain lions. There's a lot of air form, right, We're talking about our lions here, so our pumas in the Americas. There is an evidence now of mountain lions or pumas in South America that are now starting to group together and they've never really seen that behavior before. Now it's not to the extent of a pride of lions, let's say beginning exactly. It makes me like is how it started, you know, like, what exactly happened that made the line focus on that? To your point, the ocelot in South America, say, or the jaguar, the cheetah, these cats are not working together to the extent of a lion. Yeah, So kudos to the lines of the lionesses for being so adaptable and social to boot yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, you know, it's funny you had mentioned that lions were once found in other regions as well. And one of my favorite facts that I was looking up and I get this question from kids sometimes when we're talking about different African species, is well, why do they call them.

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Speaker 1: The king of the jungle?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, yeah? Why is that?

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Speaker 3: Because in our modern times you look at documentaries or see wildlife magazines or whatever else, they tend to be in savannahs in dry areas of Africa, So that's.

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Speaker 1: Not technically about jungle, right.

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Speaker 3: So interestingly enough, as you mentioned earlier, the term king of the jungle predates modern day lion populations because the Asiatic or Asian lion population which currently today is only sadly around four hundred to five hundred individuals depending on what study you look at, and that population is only found in a national park in India. However, in the tenth century, when there's a lot of written documentation about lions, they were found throughout Western Asia and the Middle East, with populations in savannahs, grasslands, jungles, wooded areas and everything else. So that is where at least it's understood possibly that the root of the term king of the jungle came from.

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Speaker 4: Huh, that's interesting, you know it kinda It's a good segue, honestly, because my other line fact, the one really that I was doing some research on because I was super passionate about it, was their connection.

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Speaker 2: With human beings.

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Speaker 4: Honestly, back when we were all hunting and chasing down prey.

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Speaker 2: There are some established predators in those areas in.

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Speaker 4: Africa to boot right, and I got some really cool factcy like, for instance, when early Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and Central Asia after migrating that second wave coming out of Africa hominid, it's a homo erectus there called.

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Speaker 2: They encountered these established lines. So that's unique.

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Speaker 4: How human culture was more than shape by having these established predators in these areas. I mean they were being hunted as well. You know, these are really big lines. There's even evidence from in Europe. There's this cave hopefully I'm not I can't speak French, right, it's Chevel Cave in France. If I'm saying this correctly, there is the earliest.

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Speaker 2: Caveingunting out there.

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Speaker 4: And it is thirty thousand years ago that this depiction of lions is hunting out there in Yip, which.

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Speaker 2: I think is crazy.

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Speaker 4: And you think all those nuances, and I started looking around, like where else in human culture was seeing the lions, and it's everywhere. I mean I literally just got back from Boston and in Boston Public Library, you see these two giant statues of.

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Speaker 2: Lions, right, you see him everywhere.

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Speaker 4: For instance, in Swahili, the word lion is simba and its direct translation for power and strength, right, which makes sense. Mesopotamians, they consider the line as a symbol of kingship and they linked it to Gilgames, which is a central hero in their mythology. In Hinduism and one of the ten avatars of visionary the god of preservation is Narashimha, a man lion that serves as the god of protection, and it goes on. I mean, in Japan you have the lion dogs, or for instance, because it was my birthday recently, that's what I wanted to point out.

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Speaker 2: In Western astrology, thank you, the.

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Speaker 4: Consolation Leo, right, is represented by a lion, one of the twelve zodiac signs. So it's a sign of passion, the creativity, and leadership. And I think of all these things because again for me, sometimes I think about the underdog species that doesn't get the attention, right. So sometimes, for instance, when you're telling me we're going to talk lions, I thought, oh, another mammal we're going to talk about.

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Speaker 2: But there's a point to that, and we're laughing about it. But you know, you know why, right.

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Speaker 4: Sometimes I want a kid to be just as excited about a toco tucnisps to the lion of the elephant.

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Speaker 2: But there's a reason for this.

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Speaker 4: These animals they connect with us in a certain way and we can use that passion right with the flagship species. Right, you help a line as an example, or maybe a giant panda, and you're going to be indirectly helping out so many other animals as well. And then when I started going into this history deep dive, just seeing how lines affected people in positive and negative way is it's pretty awesome, man.

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Speaker 2: So they definitely deserve our respect to so absolutely.

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Speaker 3: And I love that you did that deep dive because you can go to many parts of Europe and on the crests of many of the royal families there's a lion and a wide variety of the European cultures, and then you go over into Asia and you see it there on a lot of the temples as well. Yes, there's dances that represent the lion that not just Africa, but other parts of Asia as well. And so there's a deep roote of lions being a part of human culture. And to your point, one way or the other, whether they're influencing how we evolved and moved from one area to another and we had to compete with them or how there's a deep.

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Speaker 1: Respect for them as well.

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Speaker 3: And I just have to point out to again as soon who's been fortunate enough to work with these animals when you go to the San diego Zo It's front park, that's really the opportunity to see just how magnificent they are. Yes, they're cats, Yes they'll sleep twenty hours a day, but they want but still you can get a good look and just how big and magnificent and powerful these animals are. Earlier, we were talking about the benefits of lions living in a pride and how it's helpful in raising the cubs and the overall safety and hunting. Of course, being carnivores, when it comes to hunting and living in a pride.

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Speaker 1: You have to be able to feed everybody, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean big family feast on lions share, right, so lion's share exactly. This is kind of where it comes from where a solitary predator like a cheetah, let's say, or a leopard can survive off of a small a gazelle because it's feeding just them in the cubs or maybe a partner that they're with. They can't hunt or take down something like a wildebe zebra, k buffalo, or a draft, which is something lions do. Because they live in this pride. That means they can work together and successfully hunt.

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Speaker 1: Their larger prey. So this is what's fascinating too.

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Speaker 3: You're talking about hat tip to the females who are really coordinating and leaving the pride. These ladies have figured out some of the best hunting techniques where they'll send two to chase a prey item towards others that are hiding in the grass. The idea that they have this concept of okay, you go hide there, we're gonna go down wind over here and then chase these animals towards you.

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Speaker 1: You jump on them, will jump on them, and we'll get them.

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Speaker 3: And so they can overpower these larger prey by just the sheer numbers. And of course, then like you said, they get the lion's share of the meal. And it's worth noting this is an interesting fun fact for you because they are hunting larger prey.

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Speaker 1: Of course they can feast.

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Speaker 3: There's statistics out there that say a male lion can consume upwards of eighty to one hundred pounds of food in one city.

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Speaker 1: So there's a lion's share, right.

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Speaker 3: So the gorging themselves like that, though they don't do that every single day. When we think of these carnivores eating, they're not eating multiple times a day or even daily. They will gorge themselves and then lay down and digest for the next couple of days, and they might go several days to a week or more without eating again, because this is sort of their natural way of doing things.

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Speaker 4: Again, back to that adaptability. Even with that, we were talking, you know, very prey. I mean I remember certain prides that they would use the more experienced females to be the ambush hunters because they knew exactly how to grab the portion of the neck. You know, we'll get too graphic for the kids you're listening, but there's certain ways they have to hunt. I remember there was a pride specifically they needed to bring in the male line because they were hunting kate buffalo and that is a very powerful animal trying to take down.

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Speaker 2: So kudos for that.

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Speaker 4: But you know, just if there are some other little options there, you know, not only meat, but sometimes these animals they're living in some really extreme areas.

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Speaker 2: I mean you said King of the Jungle.

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Speaker 4: Yes, they were found were found in these tropical areas, but also in very dry savannah type habitats, and there's evidence of lines even eating a local melon hopefully and pronouncing right at the summa melon that they've been seen ingesting this to get some nutrients. Water, yeah, hydration, right, So I think that's wild to me. Again, just the adaptability of that with these animals.

00:13:08
Speaker 1: Animals are smart, you know, and I know it.

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Speaker 3: Of course, this episode has been inspired by World Lion Day, so we would be remiss not to talk a little bit about the conservation some of the challenges they are facing, because this is what really amazing wildlife is about. Is we get to talk about how cool and amazing and wonderfully these animals are, but we have to do it with some responsibility. So lions, like much of the wildlife around the world, are facing many challenges such as disease and hunting from humans, loss of habitat. In fact, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies them as vulnerable, with a trend of population declining unfortunately at this time, and there are plenty of conservations out there that point out that the current trends meet the criteria to listen as endangered. So we might see them switch to endangered in the.

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Speaker 1: Next four or five years. We'll have to see what happens.

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Speaker 3: Now, natural habitat for lions is found unfortunately only in protective reserves, and lion movement between prides is becoming more limited now. The challenger mentioned the prides of females will stay in the same pride, but the males switch prides move around to help switch up the genetics, which is important for a healthy population. And this also means then that they can have challenges when hunting for food as well.

00:14:12
Speaker 1: But then there's the other side of it too, because they are on these reserves, there's a lot of.

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Speaker 3: Populations that are getting too big for the space they're in. So unfortunately the rangers find themselves placing the females on birth control to try and reduce the numbers of cubs being born.

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Speaker 1: Now currently San Diego Zoo Wildlife lions. As you know, if you listen to the other episode about Awasta Leans you did. I hope you didn't. If you didn't, go back and check it out because it's awesome. It's great.

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Speaker 3: We directly support and work with lion conservation and ken you recognizing that the conservation of lions has to be reconciled with the needs of humans, and that's what's really cool about a lot of the work we're doing, we talk about a lot on this show is that it is the people who live with the wildlife that are going to be able to make the difference, and that's where we find it's most impactful to support them.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes conflict, of course, is unavoidable.

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Speaker 3: In areas where there's agriculture and livestock and we have to compete with these habitats. But together, working in these environm people are working on finding ways to minimize that conflict or eliminate it altogether.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I think we can do it, friend, right, I mean we actually, yeah, we have amazing collaborators. We always say conservation begins with people, and it does one hundred percent. When I first started working for the Safari Park, I had the privilege of meeting Massai warriors that were coming in to talk about their stories. Shout out to William and to Michael, and they were telling me, you know, being young Massi warriors, that the tradition was to hunt mail lions. But you know, to the episode we just spoke about, people can change their traditions a little bit to help out the wildlife and their own backyard, right, And I don't want to live in a world with not a lion out right. None of us want to do that. So just a reminder for all your kids out there, you can get part of all these conservation efforts from lions. You are Mountain lion here right in the United States as well.

00:15:44
Speaker 1: Well. As much as we can go on and on about lions all day, I.

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Speaker 3: Think we do need to wrap this episode up, but before we do, I want to remind our listeners that you can find lions at the San Diego Zoo over in the Elephant Odyssey area.

00:15:55
Speaker 4: And you can find them at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park over at Lion Camp.

00:15:58
Speaker 1: It's true.

00:15:59
Speaker 4: Oh but hey, Rick, you know what I think I'm getting an idea for our next episode.

00:16:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's that?

00:16:04
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you know you mentioned about lines being carnivores, right, so I was thinking we could head back to the horticulture team since that bamboo episode was so much fun, go to the San Diego Zoo and find out more about carnivorous plants.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Oh, I was wondering where you're going with that, But I like that idea. Well you heard them.

00:16:22
Speaker 3: Everyone be sure to subscribe and tune into our next episode, where we find out more about botanical bug eaters, also known as carnivorous plants.

00:16:32
Speaker 1: Marko Lentz and I'm Rick Schwartz. Thanks for listening.

00:16:40
Speaker 3: For more information about the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park, go to SDZWA dot org. Amazing Wildlife is a production of iHeartRadio. Our supervising producers are Nikia Swinton and Dylan Fagan, and our sound designers are Sierra sprem and Matt Russell. For more shows from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.