Archive for the 'lion' category

A lion on a wall of death - Getty Images

Thanks to PierreD, here is a photo of a lion on a “Wall of Death”. These circus and fair attractions included a fast car rushing on a vertical circular wall. In some cases an animal (preferably a large predator like a lion) was in the car – or the side car.

If you know a little more about these, feel free to comment here. PierreD is very interested in whatever information you would have about the cars invovled (often Maruttis in India, but others too).

This happened in Turkey, in a zoo.

A tiger found a way to leave its cage to meet a neighboring lion. This was in Ankara zoo and the tiger thus demonstrated its superior strength. Or that the lion does not fight well when it is surprised napping after a meal.

There are still six tigers and two lions in the Ankara zoo.

Source: BBC.

Or how can a grass-eating prey keep its calm even among the most aggressive predators.

‘Big Boy’ and ‘Leonardo’ are the names of two of the GPS-collared desert lions living in Namibia under the constant surveillance of animal researchers. These big males fell under the bullets of trophy hunters, even with collars and in a protected area.

It’s a pity, but these hunters will kill anything and anywhere. In this case, this will be a major blow to the small population of desert lions (a specific adaptation of the African lion to dry weather conditions).

Photo: Hunting Ventures

Source: Bush Warriors.

London is a city marked by centuries of colonization when Britons crossed the planet and brought back memories of the conquered countries including many representations of lions (both from Africa and from Asia). London kept it as innumerable statues celebrating the King of the Animals.

Londonist has a map of all these attractions sometimes dating back much further in time: Lionist.

Via Neatorama.

WebEcoist assembled some nice photos of the nicest big cats.

• Tiger
• White Tiger
• Lion
• Leopard
• Black panther
• Cheetah
• Puma
• Snow Leopard
• Lynx
• Caracal

the Barbary Lion, sometimes named Atlas lion or Nubian lion, Panthera leo leo, is a sub-species of African lions which lived in the Atlas mountains (Morocco, Algeria, mainly). It is now totally extinct out of some zoos. But it seems that it was a great animal with a truly impressive look.

Honoring its memory, I collected a few images from the world wide web:

This scan of a children’s book comes from a wonderful compilation of a collection coming from between 1860 and the 1920s and assembled in a book: ‘From Mother Goose to Dr Seuss: Children’s Book Covers 1860-1960‘ by H Darling, 1999.

There are a few more covers in the set (mostly without felines, though) that you can see on Flickr and on Bibliodyssey.

photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

We usually think that a country rich of an impressive wild life like Kenya is nearly out of danger of seeing the full extinction of an emblem of Africa like the lion. This is not all so certain.

According to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), wild lions from Kenya are disappearing quite quickly: 100 lions less each year for the last 10 years. But there are no more than 2000 of them left. The last lion would so die in 20 years.

But Laurence Frank, biologist in the protection group for big cats, Panthera, believes that the KWS estimate is much too low and that the last lion in Kenya has no more than 10 years left!

The pressure applied by the human population onto the wild eco-system of Kenya already seems huge and this is compounded by a smuggling traffic small but measurable.

So, your next safari in Kenya this year may well be the last hope you have to see the king of animals.

Source: New Scientist.