amnhnyc:

Can you imagine a world without lions? For #WorldLionDay, let’s take a moment to appreciate these majestic but vulnerable animals.🦁

Considered the most social of cats, lions live in prides that consist of one or more males, several females, and cubs. While a male lion consumes an average of 5,500 pounds of meat a year—mostly wildebeest, zebra, and antelopes—females do most of the actual hunting.

Lions once roamed much of the African continent, but over the last century, they’ve disappeared from more than 80% of their historic range. Only about 20,000 are left in the wild. Those that remain are under threat from human encroachment, poaching for bushmeat that snares lions inadvertently, hunting for local and international traditional medicines, and trophy hunting. The disappearance of lions would have major implications for their ecosystems: these apex predators hunt weak or sick animals, keeping ungulate populations healthy and helping to maintain the conditions of the grasslands and forests where they live.
Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

#AnimalFacts #lions #conservation #nature #NaturalHistory #wildlife #lion #cats #BigCats #dyk #ApexPredators
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