“Lions are a lot more behaviorally plastic than we thought,” Palmer says. This study adds to a growing body of research that allows comparisons of the Asiatic and African species and their societies. Females are faithful to their breeding partners, and fathers and uncles keep potentially infanticidal males away until they’re displaced by a new coalition. Large, migratory prey support large prides that are exclusive (for a few years) to a single coalition. The trouble for cubs is coalition territories overlap, meaning the cubs are likely to run across unrelated males. The prides hold small territories, and the coalitions patrol larger tracts that contain multiple prides. Lions share their kills, so the smaller prey in Gir more easily supports smaller groups. Mating with multiple males is not observed in African lions, likely because of the difference in prey availability between the two groups, says Meredith Palmer, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton.Ībundant deer in and around Gir have led Asiatic lions to develop a social system composed of female prides with two to four lionesses and male coalitions typically with two members. If they are, they have other reasons for not committing infanticide, says Packer, who is also a National Geographic explorer. However, there are some unknowns in the multi-male mating hypothesis, notes Craig Packer, director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota.įor instance, it’s assumed that males from different coalitions aren’t brothers or cousins. How much do lions eat? When do they begin to roar? Find out how many pounds of meat they devour, how loud their roars can be, and whether they are endangered. ( See a map of the lion's decline worldwide.) Amazingly, no lioness lost cubs to a coalition whose members she had mated with.

Ultimately, every lioness that gave birth at least twice during the course of the study was witnessed mating with multiple males. The results showed they were, frequently and quite effectively. Next, to see if other females were using the same strategy, the team spent four years monitoring nine female prides-including FLG10’s-and 11 male coalitions. In addition to observing radio-collared lions, Chakrabarti and his team pieced together FLG10’s family tree using observational data collected by researchers in the decades since his mentor, Yadvendradev Jhala, began the long-term monitoring project in 1996.

“Females mate with multiple males and confuse paternity among the males so they’ll consider all the cubs their own.” A successful strategy ( Read why animals sometimes kill their babies.) “If an adult lion comes across a cub that he feels was not sired by him, he’ll kill that cub,” which then leads the female to breed again, says study co-author Stotra Chakrabarti, a biologist at the Wildlife Institute of India. It worked-none of her cubs were killed, the researchers claim in a new study in Behavioral Ecology. As it turns out, she was.īy mating with males from every coalition that entered her territory, the now 10-year-old lioness was likely protecting her cubs from infanticide by deliberately obscuring the identity of their father. To the scientists tracking her, FLG10 appeared to be mating with a strategy in mind. ( Read more about Asiatic lions and why they’re thriving.) Then, around 2015, she did something never before observed in lions: She mated with males from a nearby coalition.

Like most young females of this endangered lion subspecies, FLG10 reached sexual maturity and mated with members of her primary coalition, the group of males that most frequently patrolled her pride’s territory in Gir National Park. The lioness known as FLG10 is a good mother and fierce hunter, providing for her cubs in the last stronghold of Asiatic lions in Gujarat, India.īut until recently, no one knew just how extraordinary of a parent she really is.

Lion protecting lioness