Male Lion's Failed Flirting and Slap by Lioness Captured, with an Extremely Intense Expression
Given the comparison with lions, the survival status of the lion, the king of the grasslands, is more like a matriarchal society, because lion prides have largely stable female lions, while male lions are constantly changing, because female lions bear the burden of reproduction.
Because of this, photographers often find many interesting scenes in lion prides, because lions are fierce, but they are still cats, and their only communication seems to be mutual bickering and biting, but not truly attacking each other; it's a way of expressing affection.
At 55 years old, photographer Vclav ilha was playing in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya and captured a male lion flirting with a lioness before mating, with a very funny expression on his face.
As a matter of fact, female lions in a pride are generally stable, they usually stay in the same pride from birth until death. Lion prides will also accept new female lions. But male lions are often rotational, they usually stay in a pride for two years (with records of up to six years), either being driven away by younger, stronger males, or leaving on their own to seek new loves and families.
These vagabonds sometimes even form male mutual aid groups, wandering around and tracking migrating herds of prey. Before the members conquer another lion pride, they are good comrades who share hardships together.
And the way they conquer other lion prides is to defeat the male lions in the pride, after defeating the male lions, the male lions would often kill the cubs to establish their prestige, and breed their own genetic cubs with the lionesses in the pride.
Male lions will flirt with female lions, and the flirting time will be longer, they will rub their faces with female lions, and give them a flirtatious look. Once the female lion is ready to mate with the male lion, it will raise its tail to signal to the male lion. And this male lion in Kenya had a somewhat exaggerated expression on his face as he flirted, as if announcing to the world that he had successfully flirted.
Although the flirting time is long, the mating time is short, only lasting about 30 seconds, but the mating frequency is high, lions usually take 4-5 days to complete mating, with 40 to 50 mating times per day, some even reaching 60 times, which is a world record. Because female lions can enter mating status at any time, and some male lions need to make more than 3000 mating attempts within a year to make the female lion pregnant.
This is because lion's reproductive ability is very weak, the pregnancy rate is very low, in the entire food chain, the energy supply is in a pyramid shape. The more you go up the food chain, the less energy is supplied. The energy transmission efficiency between food chains is about 10%~20%, so the more the food chain is upper-level, the less energy is available, which is the most economical way to reproduce.
Of course, there are also examples of failed flirting. A male lion in the Masai Mara wildlife reserve failed to flirt and was slapped by a lioness, which was a rare and funny scene captured by British photographer Austin Thomas.
The male lion spent the whole morning flirting with the female lioness. As soon as the female lioness moved, the male lion tried to approach, appearing impatient. And the female lioness remained indifferent to the male lion's flirting, until she could no longer tolerate his persistence, and slapped the male lion with a slap.
In a lion pride, female lions have a higher status than male lions. When a weaker or less loved foreign male lion comes, even before the male lions take the initiative, the female lions will attack it and drive it away. When a very strong male lion comes to challenge, and the pride leader is elderly at this time, and his combat effectiveness is no longer the same as before, the female lions often observe the situation and let the male lions fight.
Female lions will also be the head of the pride, during the day, the head female lion will take other female lions and cubs to take a nap, while 'arranging' male lions to patrol the territory; at night, she will take other lions to hunt, supplying food for the entire pride.
This is why female lions take the initiative in mating.
