#african cat

[pati-ka]

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

I promised you some lions! Let's talk about manes, males, and management.

This is Tandie, the current male lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Notice anything odd about him? He's got one of those hilarious awkward teenager manes. Except... this cat is nine years old.

I was, of course, immediately curious.

Manes serve a lot of purposes for male lions, including being an indicator of health and fitness - it's actually a sexually selected trait and a social signal. Mane texture / hair quality / length is dependent on nutrition and the body having energy to grow (and carry around!) that much hair! The color is also a signal: males with darker manes have been found to have higher testosterone levels.

In one research report, wild males were much more likely to avoid a lion decoy when it had a longer or darker mane - but the girls really loved a dark mane. It's thought this is because a long, dark mane is an indicator of mate quality. Males with longer, darker manes have higher testosterone and were pretty healthy: meaning they had more energy for fighting, had a better chance of recovering if they got injured, and generally had a higher rate of offspring survival. Manes matter!

So, back to Tandie. He was actually born at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2014 alongside two brothers, to dad Xerxes and mother Adia.

This was Xerxes (rip).

Obviously, a very large, dark, lush mane on Xerxes here. So where did these blond muttonchops come from on his son?

I asked the zoo docents and got an answer that didn't make a lot of sense. They told me that after the three cubs grew into adolescents, they were moved to the Oakland Zoo together. But living together suppressed his testosterone, and he never grew a mane.

Hmmmm.

Here's a photo from 2016, when the brothers debuted at Oakland. They're a year and a half old in this photo.

(Photo Credit: Oakland Zoo)

And here's from an announcement for their third birthday.

(Photo credit: Oakland Zoo)

Okay, so these dudes obviously all were growing manes as of 2017. I think Tandie is the one on the left in the first photo, and laying down in the middle on the second. What happened?

I was just in the Bay Area for a zoo road trip, of course I went to Oakland and tracked down a docent to ask some questions.

It turns out that shortly after the brothers turned three, they started acting like adult male lions: they started scuffling regularly. It's a normal social thing for male lions to live in groups, called coalitions, but according to my lion experts there's generally a baseline level of some social jostling within them. It wasn't quite clear from what the docent said if they couldn't manage the boys together, or if they just wanted to avoid the scratches and small wounds that result from normal lion behavior. Regardless, they put all three of the boys on testosterone blockers in order to be able to keep them together as a social group.

Now, I don't know a lot about the use of hormone alteration as a form of captive animal management, except in the case of birth control. I don't think it's something that's unethical - there was just a webinar on it that I saw go by - but I don't think it's commonly done with big cats. Lions have kind of complicated reproductive cycles, and for instance, we've been learning that female lions can take much longer to come into estrus again than expected after coming off hormonal birth control.

In males, testosterone blockers (or being neutered) means they lose their manes. This is why a lot of rescues will do a vasectomy on their males instead of a neuter - it allows them to keep their mane and the social signals that accompany it.

Tandie returned home to Woodland Park Zoo after Xerxes passed in early 2022, and the docent told me all of the lions had been off their blockers "for while." I'd guess those things happened around the same time, since bringing the trio down to a duo at Oakland would reduce some of the social tensions.

Hormones are such interesting things, though. One of Tandie's brothers has a full mane again, and the other is still totally mane-less.

As for Tandie, his mane is growing back in, and it looks like he might rival his dad for length and coloration.

He started here, in February:

Yesterday:

What a difference four months (and maybe proximity to a girl) makes!

[amnhnyc]

Don’t let your roars go unheard this Election Day. Gather your pride and go out and vote! Did you know? Considered the most social of cats, lions live in prides that consist of one or more males, several females, and cubs. African lions breed at 3.5 years old, and the cubs are born spotted at birth. Adult male lions weigh about 375 pounds (170 kilograms), while females average 265 pounds (120 kilograms). See this diorama up close in the Museum’s Hall of African Mammals.

Photo: R. Mickens/ © AMNH

[annuskabriar]

the first of the series, africa's small wild cats!! available for a print here and as a sticker pack here!

[esgotada]

[biteriskbunny]

lmao so i was trying to explain to my mate about my phantom ears. and about how i WISH I HAD THEM like that one post going around like i perked up my fucking ears to listen it’s not my fault you can’t see them.

and she was like “well, yes. i know. sometimes it’s like i can see them too.”

and i was like ???!!???? explain. now 🤲🏻🤲🏻

and she was like “you make the cutest expression when i get your attention to talk to you. your eyebrows go up and i can just almost See your ears on top of your head perk up to listen.”

and i was just,,,, woag. felt loudly seen in that moment.

[huariqueje]

Patterns - Sasha Hartslief , 2023.

South African , b. 1974 -

Oil on canvas, 95.5 x 75.5 cm.

[kalpeavaris]

MD Animal AU Sketches

couldn't get the idea of my own animal AU for MD out of my head and did these quick doodles lol

AS Cyn is a spotted hyena, maid Cyn is a civet cat, Uzi's a dwarf bat and V's a cat (no specific breed yet-)

[geopsych]

Bridget and the Saintpaulias for Caturday.

[woobosco]

Afro Culture (My Culture)

@woobosco - This shit gon be framed in my crib. 

[striped-civet]

Grey morph African golden cat (Caracal aurata) Kibale National Park, western Uganda

📸 Sebastian Kennerknecht | naturepl.com

[animalphotorefs]

Free, non-AI art reference images: male African lions.

Sourced from the Exotic Animal Photo Reference Repository

Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use these photos as references, including works that will/may be sold. Go forth and make lions!

Want more lion reference images? Find them here.

** Patreon ** -- *Ko-Fi**

[amnhnyc]

An African lion’s (Panthera leo) roar can be heard up to 5 mi (8 km) away—that’s some mane character energy!

[sitting-on-me-bum]

African Lion Cub

By Nisha Purushothaman

NBP International Awards

[esgotada]

[jagalart]

Fields

A few more complex portraits I've done lately <3 For the amazing @kiiytra, @AsterionVega and @zelkeu_art 💛