Lazy Lions

Lions are lazy animals. Believe that?

Yes, we have seen the lions sleeping in the zoo enclosures. In the zoo, most animals relax and sleep. So we can't conclude that lions are lazy. How to prove or disprove this observation?

We didn't believe it till we visited the wildlife parks in Africa. As is well known, the wildlife parks in East Africa (as well as South Africa) are huge and teeming with variety of wildlife. African lion is one of the animals sighted there easily. We, a group of eight college buddies and spouses then in our 60s, had visited four parks in Tanzania and Kenya. Lions were sighted in all the parks listed below except Lake Manyara.

1. Tarangire National Park
2. Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area
3. Serengeti National Park
4. Lake Manyara National Park

We started from Arusha, the wildlife capital of Tanzania and the nearest airport for visiting the Parks. See the map below.

This story is restricted to the African Lions sighted by us during the wildlife safaris. For other bigger animals called 'The Big Five', you may browse our earlier story titled 'The Big Five Live'. It showcases all five i.e. African Elephant, Cape Buffalo, Leopard, Rhino and the Lion.

We started early from our lodge in Ngorongoro crater. After descending to the valley of the crater, our safari driver-cum-trained-wildlife-guide spotted a dark patch in dry grass. As we approached the object, he confirmed that it was a Lion. We pulled on one side of the dirt track and trained our binoculars and cameras through the canopy of our 4x4 safari vehicle. With heart beats rising and heavy breathing, we had our first sighting of mighty lion. Our guide had instructed us to maintain total silence during the safari. We could hear our breaths. In the soft morning breeze, the mane of the lion seemed steady as if painted. Let us see the pictures and pause our narrative here.

The Lion (Panthera Leo) is a large carnivorous feline of Africa and northwest India, having a short, tawny coat, a tufted tail, and, in the male, a heavy mane around the neck and shoulders. See the picture below.

The male is conscious of its beauty! Here he licks his mane to keep it clean! Big cats and small cats-- all clean up themselves.

Coming back to the question- are the Lions lazy by nature? Here are some characteristics of lions courtesy the National Geographic :

• Lions belong to the cat family
• Second in size to Tigers in cat family
• Found in sub-Saharan Africa and India
• Symbol of courage and strength
• Roar can be heard up to 8 kms away
• Live in grasslands, scrub, or open woodlands for ease of finding its prey
• Male lions have manes, the impressive fringe of long hair that encircles their heads.
• Live in groups called a 'pride'
• A pride may have 3 to 40 lions—including up to three or four males, a dozen or so females, and their young.
• Each pride is dominated by one male
• All females in a pride are related and rear the cubs at the same time
• Females do the hunting mostly as a team
• Males mark the territory with their urine and guard it
• Once fed (adult consumes about 20 pounds of meat a day), the whole pride sleeps together. See our pictures later.
• Young lions don't hunt till they are about a year old

Back to the pictures shot by us. Enjoy the embedded comments in each picture.

Are the Lions Lazy?

Here is a short 27-second video panning across all the eleven lions in a pride sighted by us in Serengeti National Park. You may count the lions along with the narrator!

Here is another picture of four lions sleeping on a rocky outcrop in Serengeti. They had feasted on a kill and enjoying their nap together.

Lioness

A mother is a mother. See the lioness and the cub shot in Tanzania.

As stated earlier, lionesses do the hunting. Either alone or as a team. See the picture below when eight lionesses were getting ready for a hunt. It was a spectacular sight when they tried to kill a buffalo. But the buffalo herd rescued the lone buffalo successfully.

KBG-72 Contest

We had featured one picture of the two lions sighted by us for KBG-72 the 72nd edition of Kaun Banega Ghumakkad our online Captions Contest. The contest received a record 73 captions which are listed below. We thank each and every reader for their creative caption.

No.	Name	Caption for KBG-72 Contest
1	Aayush Paroolkar(11yrs)	Wildly Free Glare.
2	Aayush Paroolkar	The Look!
3	Ajai Bhumri	ऐक और ऐक गयारह
4	Amandeep Kaur	Be the lion of your forest.
5	Amitabh Bhargava	यहाॅ के हम सिकंदर
6	Anand Jain	Hum bhi twins hain!
7	Arnab Bandyopadhyay	Sultans of Sawannah…
8	Avinash Tiwari	Duniya hame loin ke nam se janti hai.
9	Avinash Tiwari	Ek myan mein do talwar?
10	BC Jayaprakash	Power and Majesty.
11	Bharat Ladha	Saath aur saathi ka santosh, ankho me jhalakta hai.
12	BR Natarajan	Rab ne bana di Jodi
13	CD Sawant	Hum dono.
14	C Raghuram	One rule, We rule!
15	Deepak Jena	Anger is fear in disguise.
16	Deepak Jena	Anger is only one letter short of Danger.
17	Deepak Jena	Just take a pic and let us go. We both are happy here.
18	GB Sethi	Thank you friends, you are very caring.
19	GB Sethi	Kab se tik-tiki laga ke aap ke intezar mein!
20	Geeta Bhargava	Hum prem ke pujari!
21	GR Sreenivasan	Lions are dangerous only when they are hungry, once satiated they are quite harmless.
22	J Ramamoorty	You dare not intrude on our privacy
23	Jaishankar	Royalty in communion.
24	KV Ramachandran	Poor guys,  let them shoot to their hearts fill
25	LS Bhargava	इस जंगल में सिर्फ दो ही राजा, एक मैं और एक तू।
26	Manju Khaitan	जंगल की अर्थव्यवस्था जो भी हो..." मैं कभी घास नहीं खाऊँगा, यह मेरा अहंकार नहीं है, बात बस इतनी सी है कि मैं खुद को पहचानता हूँ कि "मैं कौन हूँ।"
27	Manu Bhatnagar	So glad we're blending in... don't think they can see us!
28	Narendra Soni	आसमां से भी न दबे हम साथ रहने में है इत्ता दम
29	Naresh Kumar	Talaash.
30	Neelima Paroolkar	दोस्त - दोस्त ना रहा प्यार प्यार ना रहा !!
31	Nidhi Bhargava	Listen to the power of silence
32	Nitin Dhavare	"Hope they Gpay us 5K each for the pics !"
33	Nitin Gairola	Brothers of Ngorongoro.
34	NN Pashupathy	Waiting for someone to take selfies
35	NN Pashupathy	Waiting for selfie shoots and dinner!
36	Poonam Bhargava	Double trouble
37	Poonam Bhargava	Anybody dare challenge our supremacy !
38	Prabha Shankar	Na jane kis ka intezar
39	Prabhat K Jindal	Ek Duje Ke Liye
40	Prabhat K Jindal	Wah Kya Jodi
41	Pradeep Siwach	Bhai ho to aisa
42	Prashant Jadenavar	Our Silence! Our Pride!
43	Radhika Sareen	अन बान, अफ्रीका की शान
44	Radhika Sareen	रेश्मा और शेरा
45	Raghuraj Bhargava	Hum saath saath hain!
46	Rajendra Singh	Welcome to our abode!
47	Rajnesh Gossain	Ferocious friends
48	Rajnesh Gossain	Teaming twins.
49	Ramanand Baliga	"Sher"ing together!
50	Ranajit Sen	Proud of my pride.
51	Rashmi Bhargava	Iss Jungle mai hum do sher
52	RB Dhavare	Friedly look-outs for the same target...!!
53	Ritu Bhargava	शान से वो रहते है जो शेर होते है।बाकी सब तो मिट्टी के ढेर होते हैं।
54	Ritu Bhargava	यहां के हम सिकंदर।
55	Shereen Sultana	To be where you belong is a blessing!
56	Shravan Laddha	Pushpa-- jhukega naheen!
57	Shyamala Charyulu	Eagerly waiting for the visitors.
58	Shyamala Charyulu	Born Free but visiting them is not free
59	SR Murari	"Two's company   We like it that way   Affords great photo opportunity   That is National Geographic worthy   So, don't spoil it, stay away   Lest, noise from you gets us angry"
60	Subhashish Roy	You guys are back again
61	Sujata Das	The lion sleeps tonight!
62	Supradeep Sen	Looks great but keep at a distance
63	Susmita Ganguly	One with Nature.
64	Swayam Misra	We got our vaccines - Social Distancing and Masks Not Needed Anymore
65	Swayam Misra	Elections are here - do we form a coalition?
66	Unknown	Love is being together.
67	Vanita Vandan Singh	Wow!
68	Veeky Baths	जिंदगी छोटी हो या लम्बी खुद्दारी से भरी होनी चाहिए! चाहे कोई भी दौर हो, शेर जैसी मदमस्त रवानी होनी चाहिए.
69	Vinay Prasad	We do not disturb you. But you do it constantly.
70	Vinod Dhanuka	Focus on Goal
71	Vishweshwaran	Born Free Friends Forever'
72	Vishweshwaran	Together we will conquer the future
73	Yogesh	The "MIGHTY" Affair

The Winners

Our Jury has selected five captions listed below along with the brief profile of the authors.

Arnab Bandyopadhyay holds an MBA and is passionate about wildlife and travelling. He is a 2nd generation entrepreneur and loves exploring remote places. His short caption 'Sultans of Savannah' was Jury's unanimous choice.

'Listen to the power of Silence' was the winning caption given by Nidhi Bhargava. She is no stranger to KBG readers having won the Contest several times. She creates designs with paper, jute, cloth or anything reusable. An environmentalist, she loves to be with Nature. Her caption conveys the importance of silence in our lives.

Ramanand Baliga is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur who headed IBM in India. Settled in Bengaluru, he loves travelling, gardening and looking after a pair of Great Danes. A winner of several KBG contests, his caption "Sher"ing Together was sure unique!

Bharat Ladha has won the KBG Caption Contest earlier too. An engineer from BITS Pilani, he lives in Vidisha MP in the lap of Nature. His caption in Hindi साथ और साथी का संतोश आँखों में झलकता है means 'The eyes reflect the satisfaction of company and togetherness'.
  

Ajai Bhumri lives in Canada and loves to paint. An engineer from IIT Roorkee, he was an ace rower and sportsman. His caption in Hindi एक और एक ग्यारह conveys the enormous strength of two lions together. Ajai has won several KBG contests.

Our congratulations to all the Winners. Special thanks to our Jury members Anchita and Akanksha from California.

Asiatic Lions India

As mentioned earlier, the only other place on earth where the lions live in their natural habitat is India. We share below two pictures of our sightings of Asiatic Lions in Gir National Park in Gujarat India.

Although this blog is not commercial in Nature, we do share the details of tour guides and operators used by us, provided their services were of high standard. Here is the tour operator in Tanzania.

And lastly a picture of Ghumakkad shot in a jungle walking trail in Tanzania by fellow traveller and photographer Anand Jain.

Hope you enjoyed the African Safari focussed on the Lions and the Contest. Would you not want to be happy like a Lion-- sleep anywhere, anytime?

Stay connected. More KBGs in the offing.

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad with Neeta Bhargava/25th March 2022 

Postscript:

25th March: Arnab Bandyopadhyay shared a picture of two lions from Amboseli National Park taken in 2010.

26th March: Col Avinash Tiwari remarked "Baithe bithay khana mile to lazy hona swabhawik hai", meaning it is natural to become lazy if you are fed without any effort!

                         

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