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Going off subject a bit, even though the prevailing view is that the lion is the only "social" cat, there has been footage of two or three male cheetah biological brothers who exist for their mutual benefit. On one savanna hunt, the cheetah stalked an ostrich. The 300 lb. ostrich wasn't the least bit intimidated and instead of running away, started walking to the cheetah, as if to say "bring it on, buddy." Suddenly, the 2nd cheetah who was lying low in the grass, sprang up.
Ostrich changed his tune and started running but the cats easily caught him. Still, even with the two cats, it took quite an effort for them to be successful in their hunt.
I watched the footage of that incident on TV tonight on Sir David Attenborough's "Nature" program and his presentation about the group of ratite birds. I love Attenborough's documentaries.
Situations such as we are discussing here have see lions turn maneater. Especially if the lion in question is infirm , old , etc. A healthy animal would as it's been said just hunt smaller prey. Pride teamwork is really only needed when it's the whole pride eating off a single kill. To my knowledge only lions of all the big cats hunt with pack tactics. All the others are solitary or maybe a pair. The latter would still be fairly rare and probably would involve younger siblings.
One notable historical case of two older male lions working together is the case of the Tsavo Patterson lions. The infamous Ghost and Darkness. Tsavo lions are different than all other lions in a few ways. They are notorious man eaters even when healthy according to the people of the region have a reputation for being nastier than average for lions and the males are maneless.
From what I've read about them there are some actual genetic differences between them and other lions as well. I've also read that man eater cases sometimes get blamed on a lion when it was actually a leopard doing the killing as things turned out.
As far as male lions go, they are kicked out when they reach maturity by their fathers. They then go out on their own or as siblings to find new territories and females. They usually have no problem hunting for themselves. They are strong, good ambush predators and fairly fast.
Wow. Never heard of this Tsavo bunch. Interesting.
Oh look them up man. Really interesting stuff. The movie they made about the Patterson lions was cool but not exactly accurate factually. The two cats that did all the killing are mounted and displayed I the Chicago field museum. Two males, utterly maneless. The Tsavo cats are quite unique among lions.
young males at a certain age will be driven off by the top pride male...
they can take prey on their own...wilderbeasts to stealing leopard...cheetah and hyena kills too..
more males are driven away than females... ive watched a ton of lion shows and very very rarely do females get booted....
as someone posted sometimes these young males.....make friends with other young males....then they are a force to be reckoned with when they mature... one pride lion king is no match for 2-3 mature males....and the gang males will kill the pride male if he tries to fight...
when the whole pride is threatened ….the females should be helping the male pride lion..fight off any male intruders......often they don't...and the new males will kill any
cubs....and that will throw the females in heat
lions are smart..... they watch for circling vultures and will go see what they are circling....often stealing the kill from other cats/predators
also they wait near waterholes and ambush easy prey
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