Wednesday, October 31, 2007

King of the Jungle's Sex life

We all know the lions are the king of the Jungle. These cats usually reside in sub- Saharan Africa, and live in prides which consist of 7 to 8 adults (both male and female) and their cubs.

There is no specific mating season for these wild cats,

Within a pride, lions are promiscuous, but since the pride limits the number of females and males available for mating, lions are termed as being polygynandrous. This means that each male mates with multiple females and each female mate with multiple males.(http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/Behavior/Spring2004/shelburne/mating.html).

The female lions usually rub the head of the males when they want to mate, then they begin a courtship display by lifting their hind leg with their paw, or rolling unto their backs and biting their paws. When the male is turned on by this act, he snarls at the female, and she crouches down. The mating duration of the male lions are known to be very quick aka fast, repetitive and unsuccessful. Copulation last about 30-70 seconds, but this is done every 25 minutes for a four day period.

This is the reason why most male lions do not hunt, and spend most of their time sleeping because they spend most of their day mating, which exerts a lot of energy.

Source: http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/Behavior/Spring2004/shelburne/mating.html

Posted by KOFI. (6)

1 Comments:

At 9:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is very interesting, I always thought the males were just lazy occasionally defending their territory and females from wondering males. There interesting mating style accounts for their inactivity during the day. It makes me wonder how affective other big cats are at mating, they must be better because most other types are solitary. And then why did the lion, who lives in a group develop the way they did.


Posted by Jessica Johnson (6)

 

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