The Nature of Lions: Social Cats of the Savannas

PrefaceThe lion sits sphinxlike in the shade of an acacia tree. Front paws aligned, face serene, he does not acknowledge that a truckload of humans has stopped 20 meters (65 feet) away. The truck's engine is turned off, and the passengers sweat under the late afternoon sun. A fly settles on the broad slope of the lion's nose, then dances up toward the dark, moist corner of one eye. I marvel at its impertinence.Wildebeests grunt behind us. Weaver birds flit overhead and then settle, chattering, among the thorny branches of the acacia tree. There is a low murmur among us humans. The click and whir of cameras irritate me but do not concern the lion.The lion has seduced us. He seems embraceable. He is a giant pussy cat. One of the people in the truck must think so, for he jokingly puts a leg over the side of the truck as if to jump down and stroll over to pet the golden fur.In the 1941 movie version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Spencer Tracy artfully changes his face and body from benign to sinister with the subtlest of maneuvers. Cued by the movement from the truck, the lion (he isn't acting), like Tracy, is transfigured in an instant, with only a very slight turn of his head. Eyes that had been soft and unfocused become hard yellow beacons. Muscles that had yielded to gravity tense into rigid contours. The pussy cat is a predator. No more MGM mascot, he stars in horror flicks featuring tourists dragged from tents in the dark, cold night by unforgiving jaws.What are lions? Surely they are more than my encyclopedias succinct and rather droll introduction to them as "large roaring cats." Yet again, on reflection, these three words assume in my mind the subtle poetry of a haiku. They are accurate. Certain.The lion embodies such a powerful combination of beauty and beast, such dramatic grace, that it has captured the human imagination since prehistoric times. In those days, our ancestors elbowed lions from the caves in which both sought shelter, then etched images of these beasts on the cave walls. People and lions are longtime rivals for space, and our shared and bloody history gives human and cat a mutual sense of respect and fear. Inevitably, we endow these carnivores with attributes of our own, giving them roles in our storybooks and transforming them into symbols.With what eyes must I see lions today, when most people live in cities, our technology dominates the planet, and there are more humans and fewer wild carnivores than at any previous time in our history? In these pages, I set out to discover the nature of lions, knowing at the start that this is an impossible task.There is the tourist's lion, usually asleep, providing photo opportunities on vacations. The circus trainer's lion, with its echoes of the ancient power struggles between our species. The zookeeper's lion, whose snarls at feeding time evoke the atavistic excitement of nights by a campfire on the African plains. The symbolic lion, far more plentiful than real lions and seen throughout the world in statues, paintings, tapestries, stained glass windows, storybooks, flags, coins, advertisements, door knockers, and many other places. There is the hunter's lion, the livestock farmer's lion, the zoologist's lion, and the writer's lion.Lions today seem quintessentially African. They parade before our mind's eye in scenes populated by gazelles and zebras, elephants and giraffes. They loll in the equatorial sun on slides from safaris, hunt wildebeests in TV documentaries, form stylish tableaus against dusk-red horizons in the photo spreads of magazines, and lie with closed eyes in black and white at the feet of hunters posed for posterity inside musty books. Yet these typically African inhabitants were part of the landscape over much wider areas of the world until not so long ago.Chapter 1 of this book traces the evolution of lions and the characteristiEric Grace is the author of 'The Nature of Lions: Social Cats of the Savannas', published 2001 under ISBN 9781552975428 and ISBN 1552975428.