The African Lion
Infanticide & Female Response
Home ¨ Habitat ¨ Predator/Prey ¨ Social
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Systems
Egalitarianism ¨ Infanticide ¨ Agonistic
Behavior ¨ References
Image Courtesy of ABC-Kid.com
Infanticide
Infanticide
is a common practice in most mammals.
Male lions use infanticide to get rid of offspring in a newly acquired
pride that are not genetically related to the male coalition. Solitary males are also capable of killing
the offspring of an encountered pride (Packer
1983). Female lions have also been
observed to kill cubs from a rival pride, but they would never kill cubs from
their own pride. The dead offspring are
sometimes consumed as an energy source and other times they are simply just
eradicated for the sake of it. Older
cubs and sub-adults have a better chance of being able to escape incoming infanticidal males than younger cubs (Urban
2002).
Infanticide
is very advantageous to incoming males in that they are getting rid of
offspring that do not carry their genes (Packer
1983). The other advantage of
killing the offspring of the former owners of the pride is that a female will
quickly enter estrous following the infanticidal
event. As a result, the incoming males
are then capable of copulating very soon after overtaking the pride (Viljoen 2003).
However, following the takeover it usually takes a
lioness 6-9 estrous cycles in order to become impregnated again. Packer hypothesizes that this duration of
time is caused by the female adapting to the new male’s sperm rather than the
female being infertile (Packer
1983).
A very good video depicting infanticide can be found
at the following link – Infanticidal Male.
WARNING – This
video is very graphic and grisly. (Need Quicktime to view the file.)
(This video was recorded by The Lion Research Center – Urban
2002.)
Female Defense to
Infanticide
As
shown in the page on social organization, pride units are very cohesive and
egalitarian groups. As a result, female
lionesses do not always readily welcome the entrance of an infanticidal
male. Craig Packer observed and analyzed
the lionesses and determined that they have five different responses to an
incoming male coalition. The responses
are as follows:
1)
Female Defense of Cubs
a. Lionesses refuse to allow their cubs to be killed and will gang up on males putting themselves at extreme risk to injury – this cooperative defense is a very important aspect of the communal care within a pride
A very good
video depicting female defense can be found at the following link – Female
Defense.
WARNING – This video is very graphic and
grisly. (Need Quicktime to view the file.)
(This video was
recorded by The Lion Research
Center – Urban
2002.)
2)
Avoidance of New Males
a. Lionesses will avoid the incoming coalition
and take their older cubs away from the pride in order to prevent the cubs from
being killed
3)
Pseudo-estrous
a. Lionesses will copulate with the incoming
males of the coalition despite already being pregnant
b. Hopefully confuse the male into thinking
offspring is his own; however, infanticide will occur often on any offspring
born immediately following a takeover
4)
Spontaneous Abortion
a. It is speculated that following the takeover
by a coalition, some females will spontaneously abort their pregnancies
5)
Abandonment
a.
Abandonment
has never been observed, but it is possible that the lioness would abandon her
cubs upon arrival of an incoming coalition (Packer
1983)
This webpage was
created by David Shelburne ’04 as an assignment for an
undergraduate course—Biology
323 – Animal Behavior—at
© Copyright 2004 Department of Biology,
Send comments, questions, and suggestions to dashelburne@davidson.edu
