LIONS MATING – Extreme Aggression from the Big Cats

Lions on honeymoon!
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You haven’t really experienced lions if you haven’t seen them roaring, hunting or mating, its accelerating! Most of the time they sleep and are extremely lethargic, but when they’re active, they are nothing less then awesome! You are lucky to see them active during your safari, and when you do, you might experience the raw power by one of mother natures most formidable predators.

The guests that visit Tintswalo Safari Lodge from abroad gets to see lions mating quite often due to the high density of lions in the Manyeleti Game Reserve. In the images and video clip, you will see our dominant males called the Thanda Impi’s. They have established their territory in the central northern Manyeleti and are controlling two separate prides of females, also known as pride separation. For the last 2-3 years these two males have been on honeymoon on numerous occasions and has now sired a total of 20 cubs between the two sets of females!

Its a very impassioned and intense event when they mate, and these super predators mates a lot! Lionesses has a very low Fertility rate, and a very small percentage of mating results in conception. To put it into perspective, for each cub that reaches 1 year old, the parents would have mated about 3000 times! Explains why they sleep so much;) A pair will mate every 20 minutes for 4 days and nights with each session lasting 1 minute! Short and sweet! Or is it? The female growls vigourasly while the male will bite the female by the neck! By doing this he forces the female to submit and to block her from lashing out at him when he extracts. A male lions penis is barbed, ‘small hooks’ that will cause a lot of pain for the females upon extraction. Apparently this function helps inducing ovulation. Thats why they have to copulate regularly to ovulate and conceive.

Every time we witness this passionate event, the song ‘ in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight’ comes to mind and some of the guests, especially honeymoon couples, will hum the tune with a little giggle after the action!

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