Alex Braczkowski

I had like a debate with a bunch of lion scientists about this because recently on the African Lion Working Group sort of email chat, you know, which is the collection of Africa's lion experts.

And they were all saying, yeah, lions climb trees in all of our areas.

It's nothing new.

But I said, yeah, but do they climb this every day?

And this is what's very different about these lions is that they are learning this from the maternal lion.

So they're learning it from their mothers.

And the sisters and the aunts and the little cubs, they're watching their older siblings and nephews doing this.

And it's very clear.

You can see them picking it up roughly from about six weeks of age, following their siblings and their relatives up the tree.

It's fascinating.

Yeah, so for the first sort of four to six weeks, what the lionesses will do is they'll actually, they'll sort of move away from the pride.

And what they'll do is they'll find a safe resting spot and then they'll have the cubs there.

And then she will be guarding them with her whole life, her whole soul.

And only after about four, five, six weeks, she'll slowly start introducing those cubs to the rest of the pride.

Just because, you know, they're so small and there's new smells.

Yeah, and obviously also because of the fact that, you know, there is an infanticide element in lions, you know, and there's paternal uncertainty as to who the father might be.

Yeah, so with lions, about half of all lions under the age of one will actually die because of infanticide.

Infanticide where a male will come and actually kill the progeny of a pride.

So if there's potentially a takeover that's taken place and there's a new male in town and a female happened to sire cubs from the previous male, she'll be very wary of that.

Yeah.