Popular culture has depicted them both as brave, noble heroes, and as dauntless, brutal villains. You can hear their majestic roar from as far as five miles away. Lions are known the world over for their unequaled ferocity and their singular beauty. Yet there is much the average person doesn’t know about this popular, highly respected beast of the wild…
A male lion can mate with a female tiger to create a liger
This is not a joke. Ligers can and do exist. If mated with a female tiger, a male lion can father a lion/tiger hybrid. Ligers, which exist only in captivity, grow larger than both species, and share traits from each one. And as you might expect, a liger looks a lot like a lion crossed with a tiger, though the tiger stripes are usually quite faded. Sadly, ligers cannot reproduce with each other to great baby ligers; if you want more ligers, you have to do it the old fashioned way. But don’t worry, it’s doubtful the male tiger will mind the extra work; if you read on, you’ll see that he’s kind of a nympho.
Lions can be total nymphos
Little known fact: when the female’s in heat, lions can have sex as many as four times an hour, and they’ll sometimes keep this up for five days in a row! That means there’s a potential that lions will have sex 100 times in a single day! Sounds impressive, but not when you consider the fact that each instance of sex will usually last no more than one minute. Perhaps the male lion feels he has to compensate for his lack of stamina with an amazing ability to rally like a champ!
A lion is not the “king of the jungle”
Somewhere along the line, the idea of lions being the king of jungle entered the public consciousness. In reality, present-day lions have little to do with the jungle. In truth, the lion’s modified title should be more like “king of the desert; grassland; and/or dry, wooded forest.” Typically, lions live and hunt in sunny, open plains, and would be out of their element in a dense jungle. Sorry, lions, but you should leave the jungles to the jaguars and panthers.
Male lions sleep all day and have the females do all the hunting
Lions, in general, can sleep up to 20 hours a day. That leaves them only four hours for the actual business of being a lion. And what are those four glorious hours of lion-business like? Well, if you’re a male lion, you’re basically chilling out with the cubs and the other male lions, protecting the pride. This is an important task, to be sure. With their imposing size and their thick, dark manes, male lions can scare away potential invaders simply by sitting there and yawning at them. Meanwhile, the females are sent out to do all that boring “hunting” stuff. And when they bring back massive grade A chunks of giraffe and/or wildebeest, the male lions get to chow down first! Not a bad gig.
While some of these facts can be surprising, they do little to diminish man’s respect for the lion. Even though they’re not, technically, kings of the jungle, lions are still pretty much the boss when it comes to big cats. Plus, they have the power to create ligers. Let’s see jaguars try and do that.
