Turf Battle Amongst Lions
At about three years of age, young male lions leave their pride and try to find a pride of their own. This involves taking over the pride of another male and, unsurprisingly, this leads to a lot of conflict. Only one in eight male lions survive to adulthood and get to breed to produce cubs of their own. You may also see groups of males ganging together to control territories (which can be thousands of acres in size) and they can kill hundreds of rival males and cubs in an attempt to maintain dominance. At the start of this lengthy footage, filmed in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, we see two younger male lions called Maridadi and Kaka fighting an older and more experienced male called Ololparpit. Their aim is to take over his territory and his pride.
The Fight to Survive and Breed
This is a protracted battle. We start in the thick of the action with the lions running around and we can hear a lot of growling and snarling. Through the swirling dust we get a view of the three lions biting each other and wrestling on the floor. Sometimes two are fighting, with the third watching on but at other times all three are in combat at the same time. There are also times when all three seem to need a breather and stand looking at each other panting. It is upsetting to see that Ololparpit seems to be injured (across the top of his hind leg) and very distressed. But he still defends himself bravely when the other two lions launch another attack. There is another prolonged and tense pause whilst the lions recover and pace around. As the footage ends, we are very concerned for Ololparpit’s safety because he seems to be curled up on the ground and in pain. We learn from the video notes that he is calling out for his partner after the fight. We also learn that, had he lost the fight, Maridadi and Kaka would have probably killed the cubs in the pride to stimulate the females to want to mate with them and therefore produce their own cubs. Nature at its most brutal!
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