Lions live in prides that can have up to 3 males, 1 dozen females, and their young. They live in the African savannah and in a small sector of northeast India. Their daily journey is 8 km on average, but they can cover 13 km in one day. The mothers teach the young the necessary survival skills.
Being social beings, they form strong bonds and have diverse forms of communication. They use facial and body expressions. Common gestures such as head rubbing and licking give them pleasure and have been compared to primate grooming. They also have a wide repertoire of vocalizations including hisses, startles, coughs, meows, grunts, roars and barks. Their roar can be heard 8 km away, making them the felines with the most powerful roar.
They have highly developed senses. Their eyesight is 8 times better than that of humans and allows them to see at night. They also have a good sense of smell and hearing; they can hear their prey from a mile away and turn their ears in the direction a specific sound is coming from. Touch is very important for communication between members of a pack.
Lions are wonderful beings, like all animals. They are conscious and sentient, which means they experience pain, fear, boredom, as well as affection, joy, and other positive emotions.
However, there are many lions that live in captivity; it’s estimated that, in South Africa alone, between 8,500 and 10,500 live in such a situation. To entertain humans in circuses, zoos or tourist activities, they are captured from the wild or born in captivity and separated from their mothers when they are still very young so that their mothers become pregnant again shortly after. This causes fatigue, pain and malnutrition in the lionesses, who don’t have enough time to recover after each litter.
The training methods they go through are usually very cruel. They live in small spaces and, in some cases, are isolated. Among the tourist activities to which lions are most exposed is “canned hunting“, in which lions are placed in small spaces in which hunters have zero chance of missing the target.
We have the power to end the use of animals for entertainment by stopping going to zoos, aquariums and any activity with captive wild animals.
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