Lion

LION

The lion (Panthera leo) is a species in the family Felidae; it is a muscular, deep-chested cat with a short, rounded head, a reduced neck and round ears, and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. The lion is sexually dimorphic; males are larger than females with a typical weight range of 150 to 250 kg (330 to 550 lb) for males and 120 to 182 kg (265 to 400 lb) for females. Male lions have a prominent mane, which is the most recognisable feature of the species. A lion pride consists of a few adult males, related females and cubs. Groups of female lions typically hunt together, preying mostly on large ungulates. The species is an apex and keystone predator, although they scavenge when opportunities occur. Some lions have been known to hunt humans, although the species typically does not.

                                 

EATING HABITS OF LION

A lion is a totally carnivorous animal, it relies on meat for food and prefers fresh meat, but if it finds a carcass or a decayed flesh of old meat it will be able to eat it, some of its eating habits are:

1- Fighting for its share within the kill site: each lion for its own biggest share of the kill usually hence is the popular human metaphor: “The Lion’s Share”, and usually the Male lions eat first although the lionesses which are the females the ones who mostly do accomplish the hunting.

2- Lions sometimes allows their cubs to eat and gives them the priority but not always especially at times of hardship and scarcity of prey animals when the migration of big mammals takes them out of the prides territories.

3- Lions eat on the side of their jaws because of the very strong carnassial teeth and also uses the strong premolars and molars, all the teeth are perfect for meat cutting and bone crushing sometimes too.

4- The canine teeth is designed to sense the position of the bite within the body of the prey, so when a lion applies its throat-bite it knows by means of signals sent to its brain and sensory information where it must but either to crush the wind-pipe of the prey or damage and open up the jugular veins or other vital parts of its prey thus crippling it and killing it for the consumption as food, their teeth are remarkably excellent with a nerve endings that sends the information of the bite situation to the brain making the lion one of the best animals in the animal kingdom to use its jaws and teeth perfectly.

5- Lions never eat grass except in a rare cases when they experience a digestion problems so they resort to eating grass to fix the problem, perhaps because they cannot digest grass at all, that their instincts directs them to it as medicine to get rid of digestion problems and wildlife animal scientists knows more in this case.

6- Lions likes the internal organs of their prey especially when it’s freshly killed.

There are more eating habits like rare eating of alive animals and other unique habits for lions of which I don’t really remember but I will edit to add them later.

Lion is impressive animal at the end and is very adaptive even in its eating habits, where they eat antelopes in Africa and Deer in Asia in India.