The Insane Biology of: The Lion

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Images Courtesy of Getty Images

Thanks to Dr. Craig Packer for his incredible insight on the subject of lion sociality.

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References:

[realscience]

If you are wondering why some of this video is now obnoxiously blurred out - this was my attempt to get the video monetized again after YouTube decided to suddenly demonetize it. They have remonetized the video, but I will keep the blur just in case that is what helped them reverse their decision. Its unfortunately a very opaque process so I am just guessing here. If you want to watch the unblurred, SCANDALOUS version of this video with lions eating, head over to Nebula

[isaacdavis]

Nearly broke my index finger clicking on this

[rooster]

Love Stephanie’s voice. Exquisite blend of word pronunciation and enthusiastic tone.

[BilalSharqi]

Should I show this to my cat? I'm worried he'll get inspired

[Warppnt]

My old house cat was male, selectively social, and highly intelligent. I taught him to open cabinets, such that we had to tie cabinets closed with a string, so I taught him to untie the string, so we double knotted, and I taught him to untie that as well. He knew the door knob would open a door, and he'd reach for it and even try to turn it, but he had no opposable thumbs. He befriended a male neighbor kitten and they were friends for the rest of their lives, often napping together in each others yards, visiting in houses and sharing food, and defending against dogs and other cats. Mh cat also used to mercillessly tease his frienc by leaving the house first after a shared meal to go hide behind some bushes, pounce on his buddy, scare the crap out of him, and play-chase him to a tree near the edge of his territory, which my cat ran up all crazy eared and crazy eyed and yeowled as his buddy ran up the sidewalk back to his house. They never ever attacked each other to draw blood, just to startle for their own amusement. They sometimes even groomed each other, though rare. The other can was friendly but really not that bright. In a light rain, my cat would sit or roost in a hole or tunnel through the row of hedges and remain dry. His buddy tried to mimmic this behavior on a neaby hedge tunnel, but sat with his head only in the dry zone, leaving his shoulders back drenched, which seemed to infinitely confuse the poor little guy, much to my cat's amusement, which you could see by his facial expressions, slow eye blink patterns, staring, and pretending not to be staring, etc.

[kasonkl]

10:57 "Sedentary Man"

You didn’t have to call me out like that 😂

[surgeonsergio]

One thing I'd like to say is that often times scientists for whatever reason conflate PSI which is a measure of bite pressure with bite "force" to the general public. Forces and pressures are different things, forces are measured in units like newtons, whereas pressure is some force over some area in this instance being measured in pounds per square inch. So an animal with a weak bite can have a larger psi due to its tooth or teeth having a smaller area of contact and vice versa. That being said, yes tigers and lions have pretty much the same bite force but hyenas don't. They have a bite force less than half of that. There's a paper called "bite club" that elaborates this further. The measurements of psi are typically done through transducers or other measuring equipments which can give varying results for various reasons, such as the animal not biting as hard as it can or biting at different angles which would change the area of contact. So the paper actually measures the bite "force" using the literal anatomy of the animals. And it shows that lions and tigers bite more than 2x the force of a typical hyena. Another interesting thing to note is whether or not the animal is biting harder for its size. This is measured through bfq or the bite force quotient and it shows that hyeanas actually do bite as hard as lions and tigers relative to their size, so though they have a weaker bite overall they actually bite as hard as lions and tigers for their size. In other words big cats and hyeanas have the same bite force at the same size. Lions and such have a bigger bite only cause they're bigger in size. For further understanding you can check out Professor Steve Wroe's channel "real paleontology" where he explains why bite forces change asymmetrically relative to size, a phenomenon called isometry (basically due to the square cube law) and he also debunks the hyena's bone crushing bite myth making it a bigger biter than lions. He shows that it's actually the hyenas dentition that allows them to concentrate the bite on their carnassials to break bones. It's not that lions can't, it's just that lions have thinner blade like carnassials that'd break if they were to do so. Their carnassials are that way because they use suffocating bites to subdue prey to spread out that huge force over the windpipe or spine of the prey to suffocate them. He's also one of the authors of the said "bite club" paper.

[duhsbo]

As a kid, I was fascinated by these kind of videos. I went to the library every week to rent some documentaries of animals.

[qwertykins]

That part about how lion manes are unlikely to be intended as a shield against rival males' teeth and claws because "researchers found that male lions usually go for the hips and the legs...". Well yeah, that's actually evidence that the manes ARE supposed to be a shield, not the opposite. They don't go for the neck BECAUSE it is protected by long fur.

[fieryjustin]

I'm but a simple man.
I see Simba, I click Simba.

[animistchannel]

Little known trivia. There IS another species of cat that lives socially. Southeast Asian water cats (who live by catching fish, so kinda different that way too) will live in social groups of up to dozens. They still solo hunt for their fish, but they live in a big colony. Since they make a pretty easy living, basically dropping off a tree branch to claw-snag a fish at will, they can afford to share a riverbank and just hang out together most of the time.

[gleitsonSalles]

I have a orange cat. I avoid my death daily.

[sravanchaitanya]

Sees "Lion" --> *neuron activation*

[jansenart]

I like how the sound of two humans mumbling to one another is so much scarier to animals than gunshots.

[smashingmolko]

We have four cats (3 girls 1 boy) at our flat and about 3 neighbourhood cats have the property within their territory line and so cross over, a lot.
We were stressed about our cats getting along initially, but it is like watching a little pack of lions; they mostly tolerate each other, sometimes play, like to sleep near each other, eat in a little group, and overall don't care; but if another cat comes over or one of our ones starts meowing ALL of them race outside to see and chase off the 'intruder.'
It's stupidly cute, it's like a mini documentary in my backyard 😅

[MultiDogwatcher]

Awesome video. I love that you show tons of videos of the actual animals, and not just yourself talking like many dull animal science youtubers.

[wpower]

A good colleague of mine went for a safari in Tanzania and told me a lion's roar is one of the most powerful and frightening sounds you'll ever hear he really enjoyed his trip the lion roar made his trip memorable

[galaticskeleman]

I LOVE YOU INSANE BIOLOGY VIDEOS TO THE POINT I KEEP ON REWATCHING THEM LOL

[jakegordz]

Cheetahs sometimes hunt together. I know they're not part of panthera but they are a big cat... And They sometimes hunt in trios or duos of males

[Kog]

I think the fact that most videos of lions being active are at dusk adds to their appeal, seeing them walk around the savannah at sunset is just majestic