Lions
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Table of Contents
Social beasts
Members of the feline family (Felidae in the Linnean taxonomy system) tend to pretty strongly prefer to be solitary animals under ideal, natural conditions. The exceptions are Felis catus--yup, the domestic housecat--and Panthera leo, the lion. Housecats, whether fully indoor or feral, even if they individually don't like having other cats around, can get quite invested in their internal cat politics, and colonies of feral cats form systems of heirarchies and alliances between individuals. Like a group of whales are known as a pod and a group of cattle are known as a herd, housecats together in a group are known as a clowder...and we all know a family of lions are a pride.
Lion prides are tightly-knit biological family units, mostly consisting of females, who will be each other's sisters and nieces, and their cubs. The adult females raise their cubs together and hunt together for the group's benefit, and when the cubs grow up, they remain with the pride if they are female, and strike out on their own if male. The pride has one male lion whose job is primarily to patrol the pride's territory and keep out threats--namely, those upstart male lions--so that the lionesses have unchallenged access to the prey on their turf, and the male lion has excusive rights to mate with the females.
Division of labor by sex
Notably, the female lions do almost all of the hunting. A single lioness is a capable apex predator by herself, able to take down gazelles and baboons without assistance, but when multiple lionesses engage in pack hunting behaviors, they can take down water buffalo multiple times the size of an individual lion.
The male doesn't do very much hunting and is reliant on the lionesses to make kills for him to partake in. That majestic fluffy mane that's a lion's hallmark? Males have that because felines tend to kill by going for the neck; either they use their canine teeth (their fangs) to separate the vertebrae at the base of the victim's neck, or they use them to go for the throat and rip it out. That means that when two male lions fight, the one with the bushier mane has an advantage. But that thick mane that protects him from other males also gets in the way of his being able to hunt effectively. This means the male, with his "crown" of fur, can't really hunt for himself and has to wait for the mane-less lionesses to take down a kill that he can share from. In exchange, the male keeps other males from moving in on their territory. If a younger male lion usurps an older one, he'll kill all of the previous male's cubs and then mate with all of the lionesses in order to establish his genetic line over the previous male's.