Probably most of what Dick Kettleson thought about lions was wrong. At that time, in 1938, not much was known about the lives of lions in their natural state, at least, not by non-Africans. It is very difficult for us to observe lions in nature.
Because Tuffy is a major character in our tale, perhaps it would be best if we consider briefly the life he might have lived if he had not been taken at such an early age from his home environment. Since a lion is primarily an instinctual animal, some of the ensuing events will be better understood if we contrast the life he’s living with the one he should have lived.
Apologies are hereby proffered in advance to readers in the twenty-first century for whom the material here presented might be both inaccurate and inadequate. That is, if there are any lions left then, in fact, if there’s anything at all left.
Tuffy was one of two cubs born to a lioness, part of a small lion grouping, not a pride. She cubbed in a fissure of rock on the Serengeti Plain, about twenty kilometers from a pride territory and a hundred kilometers or so from the sea. She, the lioness, was killed by local hunters and the cubs brought to the port where they were sold to the sailor we’ve already met in the San Diego bar.
Lions in their natural habitat are no more dangerous to humans than automobiles. As with automobiles, they can be dangerous if you get in their way under the wrong conditions; but by nature, lions will avoid humans and do not consider them natural prey as they do, for example, the gazelle or giraffe.
As far as is known, there seem to have been ten races of lions, two of which are recently extinct. The bulk of the existing lion population now resides in Africa, although a small subculture remains in a limited part of India. Earlier, lions were spread over the entire Mediterranean basin. At one time, it’s been calculated, there were as many lions as men on this planet, about six million of each. Man has gradually destroyed the lion population, while he himself has proliferated. Perhaps this explains lions’ fear and avoidance of man. Man’s irrational fear of lions is not so easily explained.
Usually, lions will tolerate coexistence with man in a prescribed area. For reasons not directly ascertainable, perhaps genetic, although man, unarmed, is easy prey for lions he is rarely hunted by them. However, older, failed, non-pride lions or lionesses might, when no longer capable of catching and killing ordinary prey, become maneaters.
It is difficult to determine exactly, but probably less than fifty percent of lions and lionesses live in a pride. The rest are “vagrant.” Although these vagrant lions and lionesses might form groupings for social reasons—to hunt, or for reproduction and mutual protection against other lions or hyenas—they have no determined protected territory and therefore do not constitute a pride. This seemingly large percentage of vagrant lions could be the result of man’s depredations on lion territory.
A true pride can include from as few as four to as many as forty lions, cubs, and lionesses. This pride inhabits territory that is defended.
Territory adequate to support a pride must have water and a sufficient supply of natural prey, resident or passing through it in migrations, to provide food. The life of a pride is relatively stable and stationary. This is especially true for the pride lionesses, who, along with the territory, are the heart of a pride.
Vagrant lions and lionesses follow or migrate with their food supply. Pride lions and lionesses intercept prey animals within the pride territory when they pass through. This is an enormous difference. The average life of a pride lion or lioness is considerably longer than that of the vagrant. Also, and perhaps more important, the survival rate into adulthood of cubs in a pride is vastly greater than that of vagrant cubs such as Tuffy.
Lions are the only social cat. Leopards, tigers, almost all the other large felines live alone, or, at most, come together for brief breeding periods. It is rare to find a lone lion, however, except for the ill or old lion close to death.
A lion or lioness comes into adulthood in its fourth year. A grown male lion can weigh four to five hundred pounds, a lioness somewhat less. Tuffy, as a grown male lion, is over four hundred pounds at the time of our story.
Some lions have been known, in captivity, to live twenty years, but in nature a ten-year-old lion such as Tuffy is rare. Pride lionesses, however, can survive much longer.
While hunting, a lion or lioness can knock down a six-hundred-pound zebra with a swipe of its paw, can jump across a thirty-foot gorge or leap vertically as high as ten feet. For short spurts, a lion or lioness is very fast. But it does not have much staying power. If its prey can keep running for a quarter mile without being injured or caught it can usually escape. Strangely enough, lions and lionesses fail more often than they succeed in their hunting attempts, especially when hunting alone or with a small grouping. Therefore, starvation is common in the lives of lions, especially the young and old. The pattern for lions and lionesses is feast or famine. When there is a large supply of meat, a hungry full-grown lion or lioness can consume as much as sixty pounds at one gorging.
Lions and lionesses sometimes hunt at night but rarely in full daylight. Although they mostly hunt at dusk or twilight, their eyes have round pupils such as with human eyes. They do not have the vertical-slit pupil of night-hunting animals such as the domestic cat and other felines.
A typical “kill” usually begins with knocking down the prey by a powerful swing of the paw. The actual killing is typically done by suffocation, either by taking the head of the victim into the mouth or by biting and closing the trachea. It is rare for a lion or lioness to kill by going for the jugular and causing death by bleeding.
When a lion eats its kill, the belly is ripped open first. The choice morsels of an animal are the viscera: liver, heart, kidneys, lungs. Even the intestines are eaten. The lion or lioness squeezes out the contents, then eats the intestines themselves.
According to hunting conditions, a lion or lioness will eat almost anything from a mouse to a hippopotamus. They will eat fresh-killed meat or carrion. They are great stealers of prey from other animals. Lions or lionesses, when hungry, constantly scan the sky for vultures and buzzards, knowing these birds signal prey, which they can steal without needing to hunt.
The lion family is notoriously lazy. A pride lion or lioness will rarely travel as much as four miles in a day. When well fed, they will sleep or lie about in social clumpings for up to twenty hours at a time. There seems little inclination on the part of lionesses to leave the center of the pride or the nursery area except to hunt, litter cubs, or breed. The male or males of the pride will sometimes circle the pride territory to establish boundaries by spraying a mixture of musk and urine. This is to define and declare the defended territory. Except for that, they rarely move about. A male lion in a pride does not often hunt; this is the work of the lionesses.
When a kill has been made, the lion will chase the lionesses away and gorge or take his preferred parts of the prey to another place and eat in peace. The lionesses get to eat what is left. The lionesses typically chase away the cubs until they themselves are satiated. For this reason, among others, even in a pride, many starve. Less than fifty percent of cubs reach adulthood.
Generally, there are from one to four males in charge of a pride. They are the only adult lions allowed in the pride; all young males are chased from the pride territory when they reach maturity. They are chased by the pride lion or lions and lionesses and are not allowed to return.
A team of pride males almost always comes from a single litter, direct brothers; or sometimes from one lioness but of different litters. The reign of a pride lion or team of lions is precarious at best. It may be as short as a few months or as long as an exceptional observed six years.
Any sign of weakness in the pride leader or leaders is picked up by other lions, either vagrants drifting along the edges of the pride or former pride members waiting for a chance to take over. There is no observed example of a lioness taking over a pride. Infrequently is there a fight to the death between lions, for a pride.
Dominance is mostly asserted by roaring. Showing teeth is a defensive threat. There is much strutting and staring down. A lion rarely looks directly into the eyes of another lion unless he is determined to be threatening.
An uncertain or frightened lion turns his head to one side, sometimes all the way onto the shoulder, and then twists the body even farther back. This is a sign of surrender, yet a fight will take place if this acquiescence is not respected.
When fighting, lions grunt, moan, growl, meow, and roar. A lion cannot purr; no cat that roars can also purr.
Lions and lionesses can go as long as seventeen days without food. They drink water slowly, taking five to fifteen minutes to lap water into their mouths. They have no system for siphoning or sucking water up, so must form cups of their tongues and lap in a small bit at a time. In normal circumstances, they drink every day or two.
The members of a pride are seldom all together. Sometimes they are as much as ten miles from the pride center. Roaring is often used to communicate location and is a part of “prideness.”
The lion pride society is complex, especially complex in regard to lionesses. Typically a pride will have from three to fifteen lionesses plus their cubs. All the lionesses will be related—mother, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, over several generations. They remain together for life in the pride, regardless of change of pride male or males heading the pride. With few exceptions, pride lionesses, as well as pride lions, will tolerate no vagrants in the pride territory. They will band to drive off wandering lions or groupings.
Lionesses come in heat every three weeks for a period of five days, unless pregnant. The lioness approaches the male and makes all the advances. Typically, during a courtship period a lioness will seduce away from the pride center the pride male, or, if there is more than one, one of them. They will leave the central grouping for five days of ongoing sexual activity.
Copulation is quick and frequent. During copulation, the male bites the neck and shoulders of the lioness. Sometimes, in the fury of his orgiastic excitement, he will actually kill her. Copulation occurs every twenty minutes to half hour over those five days, virtually day and night. There is scarcely time taken to eat.
When one lioness comes into heat it tends to set off into heat any other lioness who isn’t pregnant. This can be quite demanding on the pride lion or lions. Under such circumstances sometimes a vagrant lion can successfully invade a territory to fulfill the duty of the tired or busy pride leader or leaders.
The gestation period is three and a half months. As the time of birthing approaches, the lioness again separates herself from the center of the pride and, still within the boundaries of pride territory, searches out a hiding place where she can have her cubs in privacy and some security. Other lions and lionesses have been known to eat cubs, and there are always the wandering, voracious hyenas.
When the lioness has had her cubs, usually from one to four, she will keep them away from the pride, and the young will survive exclusively on her milk. She does not, despite some statements to the contrary, bring back food for the cubs.
The lactation period lasts from two to three months. Since the lioness is a social animal, there is always the danger during this time that she will join the central pride group for socializing or for a hunt and completely forget about, abandon, her cubs. Lionesses are not the best mothers in the world. The abandoned cubs will either starve or be eaten by other animals.
When the cubs have reached a certain age—between two and three months—the lioness will lead them to the center of the pride. There, the lioness will first make up to the others, rubbing her face against the muzzles of other lionesses and lions. She will then come back to her cubs and, one at a time, bring them to be introduced to the pride. These cubs will rub faces, be licked, stroked, and generally initiated to the group.
From this time on, their life changes significantly. Any responsibility of maternity the lioness might have possessed before is now distributed among all the other nursing lionesses.
Each lioness has four nipples. A lioness will accept any cub wanting to nurse until it has reached the age of about six months. They seem to play no favorites toward their own; perhaps they don’t even recognize them any more. Because of the phenomenon whereby lionesses come into sympathetic heat with one another, there are usually several lionesses with cubs about the same age. Most of them are already pregnant again. These lionesses form a sort of nursery where the cubs can nurse almost at will.
The lionesses still hunt together, providing the pride lion with food and themselves with sustenance for milk.
As the cubs grow older, they try to follow the hunt. They develop a taste for meat and want to join in feasting on the prey. However, they are invariably chased away by the lionesses, including their own mothers.
The lion will frequently shoo off all the lionesses so the cubs can eat, or he will drag away some of the choice portions and allow the cubs to share with him. Except for this rather unusual behavior, many more of the cubs would die by starvation.
One mysterious element in this social life of lions is how some lionesses are selected to remain in the pride, replacing older lionesses, becoming part of this life-support system while others, when they reach maturity, are chased out along with the maturing young lions.
Some carefully trained observers, watching over many years, feel it’s a question of how the young sub-lionesses approach the other members of the pride. If they act as if they belong—approach directly, rub faces frequently and with affection, lie about in the communal groups, participate in the hunt effectively—they have a better chance of acceptance. If, on the other hand, they act timid, sly, approach the other members of the pride too cautiously, behave suspiciously, and are contentious, or don’t hunt well, they are likely to be expelled on reaching maturity along with the lions.
Since the difference between life for a lioness in a pride and life outside one is so tremendously different, these seemingly unimportant variations in deportment can mean life or death.
There is a difference between the roaring of a lion and of a lioness. A lion’s roaring is typically more aggressive, more challenging. A lioness will often roar lightly or groan to call her cubs.
A lion’s roar begins with a moan or two, then a series of earth-shaking roars followed by several harsh grunts. The series can last as long as a minute. A lion or lioness will roar from any position; standing, sitting, or lying down. Neither lions nor lionesses can roar before they’re about two and a half years old, and a typical grown male lion will roar twenty or more times in a night.
An aggressive lion coughs when angry; he also growls. A snarling lion has his mouth open with his teeth exposed. However, in general, a visible lion or lioness is not a menace because, when a lion is hungry or hunting, it makes every effort to be invisible.
The life of vagrant wandering lions and lionesses is precarious. It is harder for the lionesses to bear and raise cubs. The chasing after migrating prey makes it difficult for her to come back to a fixed den or nest; abandonment of cubs is more frequent.
Since vagrant lions and lionesses live in unprotected territory, the cubs are more often prey themselves. There is usually no male lion to guarantee a source of meat to the cubs, so starvation is frequent. These are some of the reasons why the cubs of vagrant lionesses have so little chance of survival. The chances are great that Tuffy would not have survived in the natural state.
Lions and lionesses have excellent eyesight and hearing; a keen sense of smell. They are sensualists and enjoy physical contact. They bunch and spread themselves out over one another, piling up in groups for hours at a time, cubs playing with the tails of adults, wrestling with each other, adults resting heads across the backs of others, or spread out on their backs with feet in the air. They generally move away from the pride group only to excrete in private, to breed, cub, or hunt.
Cubs are constantly playing and wrestling. Playing for the sake of play seems to be a big part of lion life. Adults will put up with continual lunges at their tails or cubs embracing their legs or paws, jumping on their backs. Cub wrestling seems to have nothing to do with survival; a lion never wrestles with its prey; this is not its way of killing. When a lion kills it rarely leaps; it almost always keeps its back feet on the ground, providing a base for its tremendous power, striking out with its paws like a boxer delivering roundhouse punches.
In general, a lion needs ten to fifteen pounds of meat per day to stay healthy and comfortable.
So this is the life Tuffy never knew. It is most likely Tuffy considers Cap to be a member of his pride and the two of them pride leaders. Sally, as Cap’s mate and because she started feeding Tuffy at an early age, is probably included in Tuffy’s sense of pride and pride protection.
It’s difficult to project Tuffy’s attitude toward Jimmy. He’s definitely a rival, perhaps as a juvenile within the pride or as a peripheral vagrant. In any case, there is no love lost between them.
It’s very hard to know if a lion can make these kinds of substitutions for his instinctual patterns, based on an unnatural situation. Some animals seem to do this, such as the ducks and geese in Konrad Lorenz’s studies.
If this kind of substitution is possible it could help explain some of the following events.