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Wow, talk about bad luck!! I've been to the park 3 times this year and have seen several lions. Last year was also great with lion sightings everywhere. But don't despair; I have got the block on cheetahs. Have not seen one since ‘99. Can't even find it at Rietvlei dam near Pretoria .

Lions occur right through the park, but best areas to spot them for me were Croc Bridge, Lower Sabie and Satara. With the latter swarming with lions. The Sweni area (+- 40000 ha, as big as Pilanesberg) near Satara has probably got the biggest concentration in the park.

We walked the Sweni trail in June, and boy, did we have lion encounters! No less than 2 prides roared their heads off next to the camp the first night. We were also lucky enough to see the location where lions caught and fed on a kudu the night before. Let me tell you one thing, as far as we walked we saw lion tracks. If you have a Mozambican friend, tell him to avoid the Sweni area.

We also had lovely sightings of about 11 cubs and 30min later a big black-maned male whilst walking just south of Satara in 2002. Lower Sabie is also a great place to spot lions. Try the roads to Mlondozi, Croc bridge and Duke dam as well as the so-called "highway" to Skukuza. A special lucky place for me has been 5km’s inside the Phabeni gate, with 2 sightings on 2 occasions.

When you walk in the park, you almost realize how big this place is! In actual fact the areas covered next to the tourist roads only covers about 5% of the park. Imagine how lucky all of us are to spot anything from the tourist roads at all!

Also look at the sightings maps at the camps and concentrate a bit on those areas. It is not always foolproof as some tourists heard a ground-hornbill or ostrich and marks it down as a lion roaring, or they’ll spot a boulder or a log and mark that down as a lion stalking something for days.

Best is to try Murphy's Law and be patient and maybe stop searching for them and you'll find it. As I have said before: at the right place at the right time and you'll see your lion!

Male lions often form a coalition of up to three related or unrelated members. In the main there will be one dominant male amongst the coalition, who will mate with any unattached females that they come across or if they can fight off the resident male - but it is also entirely possible that other members of the coalition will mate with lionesses if the matriarchal pride is large enough - or if the dominant male is busy defending his territory.
Usually though the 'brothers' will defend the territory while the dominant male is busy spreading his genes

They would not be starting a 'new pride' as far as I am aware. New prides are normally only usually started when females leave their maternal pride - but maybe someone can correct me on this?

A ranger at Lower Sabie once told us that although both lion and hyeana hunt and scavenge, lions are the dominant hunters and hyeanas scavenge more - in Kruger. He said that the opposite was true in the Serengeti. Interesting stuff!

I recently saw an interesting documentary on lion, which included a theory on lion manes. Apparently when presented with a yellow maned and a black maned lion, lionesses in season will spend more time looking at the black maned one (it's not as if she gets to choose her partner - lol!). Similarly they found that a female would spend more time looking at a lion with a more bushy mane than one with a lesser mane. The scientists involved with the docu then did some tests on these male lions, based purely on their appearance. It turned out that those with darker, bushier manes had higher testosterone levels than those with lesser/lighter manes. Interesting how such "skin deep" behaviour is not limited to us humans!

Something about lions that I never really thought about -
Both males and females roar. Males deeper and slightly louder, but over distance and out of sight it's apparently very difficult to know if it's male/female you're listening to.

Mine was on my last walk in the Park, around 1:00 am 2 prides (1 left and 1 right of the camp) started roaring outside our camp in Sweni. It felt like they were right outside our A-frame hut! I opened the door to see if I could see them in the moonlight (the only light). The smell of the lions (wet cat smell) was so strong in my nostrils that it made my head spin. The one pride was not more than 20 meters away! You could hear them inhaling!

They kept on roaring for a good part of 30mins. If you know the camp you would know that those wires won't keep out any lion. That was my first observation when we got there that afternoon. I decided that I should rather retreat to the safety of the A-frame as to go look for them with a torch. At daybreak we set out to find them. The tracks of 2 huge males were greeting us at the gate. Seems like they wanted to get into the kitchen.

The cook told us that he got up to see where they were and threw rocks at them to make them decide otherwise not to come get our next morning breakfast in the kitchen. A brave man, the Sweni cook!

I think they call the Balule blackmaned lion 'Bangu'

To bwana,
Cant recall that recent a research, but if its work I am thinking of from Kruger, - it was Paul Funston that was most recent - His most important finding was that male lions spent a proportionally greater % time away from pride females, and thus did their own hunting and not scavenged as much from pride females. The major influence was thought to be the wooded ecosystems (among other things)- there is whole long shpiel and cannot go in depth - but have that reference:

Funston etal. 1998. Hunting by male lions: ecological influences and socio-ecological implications. Anim. Behav. 56: 1333-1345.

In Savuti, Sue Cooper (i think was her name, 1991) figured that the ratio of hyenas : lions must exceed 4 : 1 to rid lions of 20 % of their food - she was in Savuti, and the problem there was that hyenas were scavenging significantly from lions - (hunting concessions adj. had removed large trophy pride males appreciably). Kruger hyenas never exceed 3:1 relative to the group of lions at a kill (Funston above)

The numbers of predators in a group will determine their ability to scavenge from another. Kruger hyenas supposedly scavenge 50 % of food procured (Mills etc.), and they hunt more in E Africa (Ngorongo & Sereng.), where bigger groups enable better hunting and scavenging abilities from lions too.

There are lots of studies done, and many were done ages ago, on that issue. I have dug older stuff up, but maybe you are referring to something newer that am unaware of. let me know.

w

Hi Cougar,

One sunset drive we took from Lower Sabie was driven by a chap who was studying for an honours degree and was spending a lot of time looking at the lion in Kruger. One of the stats he told us was that giraffe can make up to 40% of the diet of the lions in Southern Kruger - a pretty astounding figure!

It would be really interesting if Kruger would release estimated stats like this along with the game counts. This chap did really seem to know his stuff, but how correct he was on this particular "fact" I can't say.

We've only seen lion going after a lone giraffe once in Kruger and we didn't see the end of the chase as they got too far into the bush. In a way it was a relief - like you, I really love giraffe.

Agree with Meg, it would be intersting to see stats on what lion, leopard, cheetah, hyeana, jackal, serval etc eats.

We have also seen several times, lion around a giraffe kill. I know the first time we saw it, we were amazed that lions could bring down such a big animal. I should imagine they would take out the very young, sick and the old. The animal would also be on its own. I would also say they would have to be a large pride to get this right. All the kills we have seen the giraffe was very dark (showing it was old) and it was a big pride eating it.

I came across a few giraffe kills during my last visits to Africa.
I heard that lions chase giraffes to tar roads. Giraffes fall down when running from sand to a tar road, then the lion just has to finish his "work".

Two things I have been told which may help to explain how lions bring down giraffe and the relative frequency of lions at giraffe kills:

1) Lions will often chase giraffe down sand banks, where the giraffe trip up attempting to run with their long legs down an uneven surface. Lions will then pounce on the fallen animal.

2) When being chased, giraffe often slip with their hooves on tar roads, especially when wet. Again, the chasing pride quickly overcome the fallen giraffe. There does seem to be a higher frequency of roadside giraffe kills than other prey, although this is my impression, not based on any statistics.

I've never witnessed either situation referred to above, although the information comes from drivers on night drives.

If you can get hold of a book called Kruger National Park, Wonders of an African Eden, there is quite a detailed discussion of lion hunting preferences.
Giraffe do rank highest, but it may be biased because the carcasses are so large and kills of this species are readily noticed. Interestingly, it appears that porcupines are a highly favoured prey species in the Park. They are hunted far more frequently and intensively than there abundance would indicate, thus showing that lions have a preference for them.
While I was a guide in a private game reserve, giraffe kills were also fairly common. In all instances, they would be chased down steep river banks or up koppies. As soon as the giraffe loses its footing and falls, it is defenceless. In the couple of occassions where I have witnessed it happening, the lions stay out of the way of the giraffe, they herd it though to the obstacle which they hope will trip it up. In one instance, a pride of lions herded a giraffe for 3 kilometres to the Sand River before they actively started chasing it and got it to stumble and fall down the river bank.

From Richard Estes book Behaviour Guide to African Mammals ..

FAMILY Felidae

Rubbing and rolling. Head-rubbing is stimulated by odours other than urine (e.g., catnip) and may serve to deposit glandular secretions as well as to anoint the animal with scent.
fter sniffing, or licking and biting the place, and often after grimacing, the cat proceeds to rub its lips, cheeks, head, and neck on the spot.
Copious amounts of saliva often appear on the lips during a vigorous rubbing bout, soaking the spot and the rubbed areas of the cat.
Cats are also stimulated to rub their cheeks and neck on smelly, decomposing substances such as carrion and dung, followed sometimes by rolling and writhing of the whole body on the spot.
The parts of the body which are most commonly rubbed, namely the forequarters, are also the places most commonly sniffed and rubbed during social encounters between cats (more under Tactile Communication).

FAMILY Canidae

The canid habit of rubbing and rolling in smelly substances, including carrion, faeces, and the like (cf. civet), hardly differs among species.
The animal lowers its forequarters and rubs its temple and sides of the neck on the spot several times, then turns on its back and proceeds to writhe and wriggle so that its shoulders and back are thoroughly impregnated.
No one really knows the meaning of this behaviour, though one plausible idea is that the animal makes itself more socially "interesting" to its fellows.