The Wonders of the Jungle Volume Ii Part 12

_How the Lion is Different from Other Cats_

I have told you the many qualities which the lion has like all other animals of the Cat Tribe. But can you see in what qualities the lion is _different_ from all other felines?

I shall tell you. First, the lion has a mane; that is, the male animal has; the lioness has no mane. _No other member of the Cat Tribe, male or female, has a mane._

Also, the tail of the lion has a _tuft_ of hair at the end; _no other animal of the Cat Tribe has the tuft_.

Moreover, the tail of the lion or lioness hangs straight out from the body; it is not naturally _curled_, like the tail of the ordinary cat or other feline. But of course the lion can curl his tail for a moment, if he wants to,--for instance, in order to whisk off a fly.

I shall now describe to you more fully these special qualities of the lion.

The lion's mane is composed of long, bushy hair. The hair grows all around his neck, and upon his shoulders. It begins to grow when he is three years old, and continues to grow till he is about five years old.

A shorter growth of hair extends to the under part of the body of those lions that live in colder regions.

You may have read in your geography that in the interior of Africa there is a table-land, a part of which is about 6,000 feet high. There it is generally cold, and especially at night. So, to protect them from the cold, the lions that live there have a much thicker mane and more hair on the under part of their bodies than the lions that live in the hot lowlands nearer the sea.

When the lion lives in forest regions where there is plenty of vegetation, his mane is usually brown in color and much darker than his tawny yellow body. Why is that? Because the vegetation has both dark and yellow patches, and so the lion looks very much like his surroundings, and finds it easier to stalk his prey without being detected.

But when the lion lives in sandy or stony regions, the color of his mane is more like that of his body, that is, yellow; so he appears to be very much like the color of the sand or stones around him.

Once a lion and a lioness were drinking the water from a little pool in the stony region. Two hunters happened to approach the place from behind a large boulder. They were standing about twenty yards from the lion and lioness, and yet they could not distinguish the animals. They _heard_ the lapping of the water, and that is how they knew that the animals were somewhere close to them.

As for the tuft of hair at the end of a lion's tail, n.o.body seems to know why the lion has that tuft. The end of the tail has a hard nail, or claw, and the tuft of hair may be meant to enclose the nail, and to prevent it from being worn out against the ground. But n.o.body seems to know why the nail itself is there, as the lion never uses it now.

Perhaps the nail had a use many generations ago, and the lion has forgotten that use now.

The tail itself, as I have already told you, hangs down straight, and does not naturally curl. It may be so because the lion does not use his tail constantly, as other animals of the Cat Tribe do, such as the tiger and the leopard. Why? Because those other animals live in denser jungles, and so they constantly use their tail as a feeler; that is, as the animal walks through the jungle his tail _feels_ the objects which it touches, just like a hand; and in that way the tail gives warning of any danger coming from behind. So these felines that live in the dense jungles have got used to keeping their tail stretched out like a hand; and the tail is curled upward so as not to rub against the ground.

But as the lion usually lives amid scantier vegetation, he does not need to feel his surroundings quite so constantly; and so his tail has lost the power of curling itself upward.

Of course, the lion still uses his tail to express his love or hate, as many animals do. He can express his affection by wagging his tail, just like a dog, though he seldom has any reason to show his affection for men; a tame lion, however, has actually been known to do that. But he may very often have reason to express his anger, in fact, whenever a hunter tries to kill him. Then the lion lashes his tail in anger from side to side, before leaping at the hunter.

CHAPTER XI

The Lion's Daily Life

Now I shall tell you about the remaining habits of the lion, and how he lives every day.

Lion cubs at birth are usually twins or triplets. Sometimes four or even five cubs are born together; but then they are very difficult to rear, and one or two of them usually die. So a lioness has generally a family of two or three cubs to take care of. She brings them up in almost the same way that a tigress rears her cubs, as I have already described. The lioness feeds her cubs with her milk for about the first three months, and after that she gives them a little tender meat.

When the lion cubs are six months old, they are able to eat all kinds of meat and to follow their mother to hunt the prey. She teaches them the tricks of the jungle, just as the tigress teaches _her_ cubs.

So, by the time the lion cubs are about a year old, they can kill the prey by themselves. Their mother just looks on, and _criticizes_ their work! That is, she tells them if they have done their work well, or if they have done it badly! How does she tell them that? In this way:

If she is satisfied with their work, she does nothing in particular; she just joins the cubs in eating the prey after they have killed it. But if she is _not_ satisfied with the way in which they have caught or killed the prey, she cuffs them with her paw!

Hunters have actually observed lionesses doing that! And of course the lion cubs practice their lessons more thoroughly the next time. In the jungle, the children of animals do not need to be punished more than once or twice!

You will notice that I have said nothing about the cubs' _father_, the lion. I am sorry to say that the lion is not usually so good a father as the tiger is. You will remember that the tiger helps his wife to provide food for the children, and also to teach them the tricks of the jungle.

A lion seldom does that; he usually deserts his family, and lets them take care of themselves.

A lion that does stay with his family, after the cubs are born, has usually more than one wife. In that respect also the tiger is far finer than the lion. A tiger has only _one wife_; and he takes care of her and the cubs. But when a lion does stay with his family, the family usually consists of two or three lionesses, who are his wives, and their cubs.

In that case they hunt the prey in a pack; that is, the lion and the lionesses all hunt the prey together; and they are even helped by the older cubs. They need to hunt in a pack when the prey happens to be large, such as a buffalo or a giraffe. A lion by himself could seldom kill a buffalo or a giraffe.

Many a fight has been observed in the jungle between a lion and a buffalo--and almost every time the buffalo has succeeded in driving off the lion with its horns. Even if the lion managed to leap upon the buffalo from the back, he could not kill the buffalo by _biting it on the neck_ because of the thick hair there.

And if the lion tried to stun the buffalo with a blow of his paw on the buffalo's head, the blow would not be enough, because of the thick hair which grows on the African buffalo's head. And meanwhile the buffalo would rear and buck, and throw off the lion. But if the lion has one or two lionesses to help him, they can all attack the buffalo at the same time, and pull it down and stun it with many blows.

On the other hand, as you will remember, in a fight between a single tiger and a single buffalo, the tiger always wins; he dodges the buffalo's horns, then seizes the buffalo by the _throat_ from underneath. In that way he always kills the buffalo. It is only a herd of buffaloes that can beat a tiger, not just one buffalo.

A lion by himself is also unable to kill a giraffe in most cases; for if the giraffe sees the lion coming, it will kick out with its hind legs or its fore legs; and a kick from a giraffe has been known to disable a lion completely. So if a lion by himself wants to attack a giraffe, he must first stalk the giraffe stealthily, and then jump on it suddenly.

But as the lion cannot usually come near enough to do that, he generally attacks a giraffe with the help of one or two lionesses. For then they can all attack the giraffe from different sides; and as the giraffe cannot kick different ways at once, one of them is sure to jump upon the giraffe's back and bite it on the neck.

As I have just said, a lion cannot often stalk his prey near enough to leap upon it. There is a reason for that. Compared with his size, _the lion's leap is the shortest of all members of the Cat Tribe_. The farthest that a lion has been known to leap, even with a run, is about thirty feet--whereas a tiger has been seen to leap a distance of forty-eight feet!

The lion's body is not meant for leaping far. His chest and fore legs are very strong, but his hind legs are not quite so strong--and in leaping an animal uses its hind legs most. For instance, the kangaroo has the biggest leap of all four-legged animals of its size; and it has very large hind legs and very small fore legs.

"But if the lion cannot leap very far, how does he catch his prey at all?" you may ask.

I shall tell you. Like all other felines, he usually hunts at night. He hides near a pool or a stream, and waits for his prey to come to drink.

Then he tries to approach the prey noiselessly on his padded feet. If he succeeds in creeping near enough to leap upon it, he certainly has his meal that night. But if he does not succeed in doing that, he tries another plan. He roars!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Giraffes]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kangaroo]

And that is an advantage a lion has over all other animals. None of them can roar like him. Even a tiger's roar is not so loud, and so he seldom tries to roar. But very often a lion _must_ roar to catch his prey, and so by constant practice he has made his roar very terrible indeed.

Yes, the lion really catches his prey by roaring. When the animals are drinking at the pool, the lion puts his mouth to the ground and roars.

It sounds just like thunder.

When you hear a roll of thunder, it sometimes happens that you cannot tell from which direction the thunder is coming. In the same way, when the animals hear the lion's roar, they cannot always tell from which side the roar is coming, because by putting his mouth to the ground the lion sends the roar in all directions. So in their terror some of the animals run the wrong way, and actually run toward the lion. Then the lion finds it easy to leap upon at least one of them.

The lion seldom hunts in the daytime. But when he does, he uses a different method. He chooses a pool amid sandy or stony ground. Then he half buries himself in the sand, or lies low among the stones and boulders. So if any animal comes to drink from the pool, it does not notice the lion because the lion's tawny color makes him look like the sand or stones. Then the lion leaps upon the animal and catches it.

After having his meal, the lion drinks from the pool. If the prey is rather large, so that he cannot finish it at one meal, he keeps it for the next day's meal. He drags the animal's body to some hiding place and covers it up with sand or leaves. Of course, he stays somewhere near that place, as otherwise _the thieves of the jungle_ would eat up the food. The thieves of the jungle are the jackal and the hyena.

But as the lion usually hunts his prey in the night, he generally sleeps in the daytime. He is not really dangerous except at night. If a man meets a lion suddenly in the daytime, the lion will not usually attack him, unless very hungry. Many a man who has met a lion in the jungle by day has escaped in safety by just standing still, making no sound and no motion. After a glance at the man, the lion has walked off.

_Most wild animals are afraid of man._ Perhaps that is because they do not quite understand him, or how he can hurt them from a distance--by shooting them with a gun or even with an arrow. That is why most wild animals try to avoid man, unless they are wounded or are very hungry.

But I must tell you here that a tiger attacks a man much more readily than a lion does. Even in the daytime a tiger will usually attack any man he meets--like the fisherman that the tiger carried off from the river, as told on page 110.