Two lions break swimming record for ‘female affection’ | CNN

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Two lion brothers, one with an amputated leg, have been spotted taking a record-breaking night swim in dangerous waters in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Researchers believe the nearly one-mile (1.6-kilometer) crossing of the crocodile-infested Kazinga Channel is the longest swim documented by lions.

And it’s another chapter in the story of Jacob, a resilient lion who has survived many life-threatening situations. situations, including losing part of a leg in a poaching trap, during his 10 years in the park.

But why did Jacob and his brother Tibu cross the waterway connecting two lakes? They were likely looking for females after losing dangerous fights to another pride of male lions – and to avoid humans in the process, researchers say.

The scientists’ results were published Wednesday in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

“Competition for lionesses in the park is fierce and they lost a fight for the affection of the females in the hours before the swim, so it is likely the pair undertook the risky journey to reach the females on the other side of the channel,” said lead author of the study, Dr Alex Braczkowski, a researcher at Griffith University’s Research Centre. for planetary health and food security in Australia, in a statement.

Braczkowski has been following Jacob’s story for eight years as part of his long-term study of African lions in Queen Elizabeth National Park and other Ugandan national parks. As the scientific director of the Volcanoes Safaris Partnership Trust’s Kyambura Lion Monitoring Project, Braczkowski has been working with the Ugandan government since 2017 to gather information on predator populations.

“Jacob has had an incredible journey and he is truly a cat with nine lives,” Braczkowski said. “I would bet everything I have that we are dealing with the most resilient lion in Africa: he has been gored by a buffalo, his family has been poisoned for the lion body parts trade, he has been caught in a poacher’s trap and finally lost his leg in another poaching attempt where he was caught in a steel trap.”

Braczkowski and his team, including field coordinators Orin Cornille and Bosco Atukwatse and cameraman Luke Ochse, wanted to film the brothers hunting and find other lions by tracking Jacob and Tibu’s movements. Under the supervision of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, Ochse used high-definition heat-sensing cameras on drones.

In late January, the team witnessed Jacob and Tibu violently fighting with other male lions twice within 48 hours. The other lions were trying to chase Jacob and Tibu away. The lions left their territory, and Jacob took the brunt of the damage, said Braczkowski and Duan Biggs, a study co-author and associate professor and Olajos Goslow Chair of Environmental Science and Policy at Northern Arizona University. Tibu led the other lions away from Jacob, and soon after, they approached the canal.

The brothers attempted to cross the Channel three times, returning to shore on the first two attempts. The video shows a heat signature following the brothers during one of their attempts, which may have been that of a crocodile.

Lions are certainly formidable predators, but a Nile crocodile can easily kill a lion in the water, Braczkowski said. Crocodiles can weigh up to four times more than a male lion and have been observed killing lions as the big cats swim anywhere from 10 to 200 meters, according to the study authors.

With only brief intervals of about 15 minutes between each attempt, the brothers succeeded in their third attempt, taking about 45 minutes to cross the river. Jacob was 30 to 40 meters behind his brother, but both managed to reach the other side safely.

“The biggest surprise was finding ourselves in waters with high densities of crocodiles and hippos,” Braczkowski said by email. “But finding females to breed with is clearly more important to male lions than their own well-being or the potential risk of being killed by crocodiles and hippos.”

The lions could have used a small connecting bridge, but researchers suspect that human foot traffic on the bridge deterred the brothers from choosing that route.

Braczkowski studied the ratio of male lions to female lions and his findings suggest that the lion population in the park is declining.

“In healthy lion populations, the sex ratio is two females for every male, whereas in Queen Elizabeth Park it’s the opposite,” he said. “Our latest lion census suggests that the park’s lions have declined by 50% in just five years. years.”

Other African reserves, such as the Masai Mara or the Serengeti, are home to large lion populations, but they have measures in place to limit poaching and prevent lions from encroaching on livestock populations.

“In Queen Elizabeth National Park, on the other hand, there are 60,000 people living in the park, there are thousands of cows and there is a high rate of poaching,” Braczkowski said. “When these threats converge, the lions decline rapidly.”

Unlike other big cats, lions are social creatures, said Dr. Craig Packer, founder and director of the University of Minnesota Lion Center and McKnight Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. Packer was not involved in the research but has spent decades studying African lions and is the author of “The Lion: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation of an Iconic Species.”

Previous research has shown that big cats such as lions and tigers can swim when necessary.

“They have big plate-like feet, they’re strong and they’re going to be looking for females somewhere,” Packer said after seeing the video. “It was a great motivation to cross.”

Packer’s research has shown that when male lions stay in groups, they produce more cubs. And females in groups tend to give birth at the same time.

“So you have cohorts of young people growing up together and forming a coalition,” Packer says. “If you’re a lone male and you see a coalition of nine males, you’re doing a lot more than just swimming across the Channel.”

Same-sex lions are incredibly affectionate with each other and view each other as lifelines, he added. Even prides of two or three males have a much longer life expectancy, and lone lions have a lower chance of survival, Packer said.

It’s no surprise, then, that Jacob and Tibu stuck together, which allowed them to survive. Several agencies also stepped in to provide Jacob with veterinary assistance over the years, Braczkowski said.

But the biggest threat to lion populations is shrinking land, Packer said.

As the human population increases near wildlife reserves, more land is being converted to agriculture, reducing the areas where lions can roam and hunt. Lions then enter populated areas and attack livestock.

Seeing Jacob and Tibu The river crossing shows how far lions are willing to go to find new living spaces and new mates, Braczkowski said.

“This type of behavior is emblematic of the need for wildlife to make increasingly risky decisions about resources and partners in human-dominated landscapes,” Biggs said in an email. “If conservation is to work for lions in places where people live, we need economic models that will support the communities that live near lions and suffer most from their conflict with livestock.”