Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Why is the lion scored below the tiger on ecological role but above on culture?
Lions structure some savanna systems; elephants and wolves outrank both as engineers or keystones in this atlas. Culture is flags, churches and film -- lions win that axis. Scores stay relative across 24 types.
What is different about Gir lions?
Asiatic lions are a single-forest population with a distinctive belly fold and a thinner mane. A disease or fire there is a subspecies event.
Did Cecil change hunting policy?
The 2015 Hwange killing spiked petitions and some airline trophy bans. Zimbabwe and US Fish and Wildlife arguments did not end trophy hunting as a system.
Are lions recovering like some wolves?
No. Most African populations are still in long decline outside a few well-funded parks. VU is not a rebound band.
What did Born Free fix in the public mind?
Elsa the lioness (1960 book, 1966 film) made rehabilitation a children story. Field lion work is pride demography and conflict, not a single tame cat.
Who runs the Serengeti numbers?
The Serengeti Lion Project (Packer and successors) produced the long pride dataset that textbooks still mine.
IUCN: Vulnerable
Anatomy overlay
Numbered teaching hotspots on the species still — not a clinical diagnosis.
- 1 Primary weapon or tool — The bill, teeth, trunk, pouch or talon that field guides name first -- and that trade or c
- 2 Energy store — Fat, cache, crop or bamboo hours that decide whether a season closes.
- 3 Natal or breeding site — A redd, eyrie, den, anemone or ice lair -- often a single-point risk (Izumi, Natron, Gir).
- 4 Sensory organ — Dawn and dusk vision, roar as a spacing sense. The mane is heat and status, not armour aga
- 5 Human interface — Hunt, tourism, film or quota -- the surface where lion biology meets English-language law.
Every lion is a stack of tissues that must agree under season, prey and human pressure.
Meters below repeat the six atlas scores as gauges; they are relative marks, not laboratory certificates.
Systems
Support and integument
A sexually dimorphic pantherine: mane, heavier male forequarters, and a larynx built for a long-distance roar. Females do much of the coordinated hunt.
Feeding apparatus
Cooperative stalks on zebra, wildebeest and buffalo. Scavenge and kleptoparasitism (including from hyenas, and the reverse) are ordinary, not shameful. The feeding kit sets the ecological-role score relative to the other 23 types.
Respiration and circulation
Gas exchange and blood flow are tuned to the lion energy budget -- dive, hover, sprint or bulk browse -- not to a generic vertebrate template.
Senses and neural control
Dawn and dusk vision, roar as a spacing sense. The mane is heat and status, not armour against a horn.
Reproduction and ontogeny
Replacement rate is the hidden resilience number. Poison, snares and shrinking prey outside fenced cores. VU is a continent-scale slide, not a Gir postcard.
Thermoregulation and salt/water
Climate and osmoregulation bound where a lion can close its daily budget. Field sites in the English-speaking world still measure that envelope first.
Relative meters
Hotspots
Primary weapon or tool
The bill, teeth, trunk, pouch or talon that field guides name first -- and that trade or conflict usually targets.
Energy store
Fat, cache, crop or bamboo hours that decide whether a season closes.
Natal or breeding site
A redd, eyrie, den, anemone or ice lair -- often a single-point risk (Izumi, Natron, Gir).
Sensory organ
Dawn and dusk vision, roar as a spacing sense. The mane is heat and status, not armour against a horn.
Human interface
Hunt, tourism, film or quota -- the surface where lion biology meets English-language law.
Tissues & materials
Keratin and integument
Feathers, fur, baleen or skin plates -- tissues, not metals. Moult and wear are the maintenance cycle.
Bone and cartilage
Load paths for stoop, lunge, knuckle-walk or hover. Marrow and pneumatic bone differ by family.
Muscle and tendon
The expensive tissue that speed and intelligence scores only hint at.
Fat, oil and glycogen
Stores that migration, fast and lactation spend. A market for those stores (oil, ivory, fin) is a historical threat.
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