Asiatic lion

• 1. Introduction

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  The Asiatic lion has recently started swimming. In 2024 and 2025, individual lions crossed the narrow channel that separates the mainland of Gujarat from Diu Island. Officials relocated them back to Gujarat at the request of the Diu administration, which feared disruption to human life. Conservationists protested that the removal was unnecessary. The episode shows how oddly this animal is placed in the world. The surviving population of these lions lives only in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List and legally protected in India. Yet lions of this kind once lived across a vast stretch of Asia, and even in parts of Europe. How did a big cat with such a wide homeland end up in a single corner of western India? Is it truly a separate kind of lion, or just a northern branch of the African family? What makes it look and live differently from its African cousins? And what happens when a recovering population begins to spill out of its forest into farmland and villages?

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• 2. Name and Ancestry

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  In 1826, Johann N. Meyer described a lion skin from Persia and called it Felis leo persicus. That description became the first scientific account of the Asiatic lion. Over the following decades, other naturalists described lions from different corners of Asia, and their names were later treated as synonyms. Edward Turner Bennett proposed Felis leo bengalensis in 1829, after a lion kept in the menagerie of the Tower of London. Walter Smee proposed Felis leo goojratensis in 1833, based on two skins of maneless lions from Gujarat. Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet, named Leo asiaticus in 1834. Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville named Felis leo indicus in 1843, working from a skull. In 2017, the Asiatic lion was folded into Panthera leo leo, because it closely resembles specimens of the Barbary lion in both form and genes. Some scientists still prefer the name P. l. persica. A standardised haplogroup phylogeny supports the view that the Asiatic lion is not a distinct subspecies but a haplogroup of the northern P. l. leo.

  The deeper story starts in Africa. Lions first left that continent at least 700,000 years ago. Their descendants in Eurasia became Panthera fossilis, which later evolved into the cave lion, Panthera spelaea. The cave lion died out around 14,000 years ago. Genetic analysis shows it was a separate species that split from modern lions about 500,000 years ago, and it is unrelated to modern Asian lions. Mitochondrial DNA from lions across the world, including extinct Barbary lions, places sub-Saharan African lions at the base of the modern lion family tree. That points to an African origin, probably centred on East and Southern Africa. From there, lions most likely spread to West Africa, eastern North Africa and, around the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, into Turkey, southern Europe and northern India during the last 20,000 years. The Sahara, the Congolian rainforests and the Great Rift Valley acted as natural barriers.

  A study of genetic markers from 357 captive and wild lions in Africa and India found four lineages. The first wave of expansion, from East Africa into West Asia, probably happened about 118,000 years ago. The Asiatic lion is closer to North and West African lions than to those of East and Southern Africa. The two groups probably diverged between 186,000 and 128,000 years ago. Contact with North and Central African lions likely ended when lions vanished from Western Eurasia and the Middle East during the Holocene. Today's Asiatic lions carry less genetic diversity than African lions, which may reflect a founder effect in the small remnant population of the Gir forest. Fossils tell of lions in places far from Gir, including Shishan Marsh in Jordan around 250,000 years ago, Wezmeh Cave in Iran, and West Bengal, reported in 1976. A fossil tooth from Batadomba Cave shows lions once lived in Sri Lanka, perhaps until about 39,000 years ago, before humans arrived on the island.

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• 3. Anatomy of a Gir Lion

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  A longitudinal fold of skin runs along the belly of the Asiatic lion, and it is the most striking physical mark that sets the animal apart. The coat ranges from ruddy-tawny, heavily speckled with black, to sandy or buffish grey, sometimes with a silvery sheen in certain light. Males carry only a moderate mane on the top of the head, so their ears always show. On the cheeks and throat the mane is scanty, just 10 cm long. The tail ends in a larger tuft than an African lion's.

  The skull tells its own story. About half of the skulls from the Gir forest have divided infraorbital foramina, the small openings beneath the eye sockets, while African lions have a single opening on each side. The sagittal crest is more strongly developed, the area behind the eye sockets is shorter, and the auditory bullae are less inflated. Adult male skulls measure 330-340 mm in length, and female skulls 292-302 mm.

  Males stand up to 107-120 cm at the shoulder, and females 80-107 cm. Two lions measured in the Gir forest were 1.98 m from head to body, with tails of 0.79-0.89 m, for total lengths of 2.82-2.87 m. An average adult male weighs 160.1 kg, with 190 kg as the upper limit. A wild female weighs 100 to 130 kg. That makes the Gir lion about the size of the Central African lion, and smaller than the biggest African lions.

  The modest mane is not unique to India. Most lions in ancient Greece and Asia Minor also had less developed manes that did not reach below the belly, sides or forearms. Small-maned lions were known in Syria, the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt as well.

  Some individuals broke the usual scale. The confirmed record for a male Asiatic lion is 2.92 m including the tail. The Mughal emperor Jahangir allegedly speared a lion in the 1620s that measured 3.10 m and weighed 306 kg. In 1841, the English traveller Austen Henry Layard saw a lion in Khuzestan, Iran, that had done much damage in the plain of Ram Hormuz before a companion killed it. He called it "unusually large and of very dark brown colour", with some parts almost black. In 1935, a British admiral reported a stocky, light tawny, maneless lion near Quetta in Pakistan. He wrote that none of his party doubted what they saw, until officers at Quetta questioned whether a lion could be in the district at all.

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• 4. Retreat From Three Continents

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  Around 6,500 years ago, and possibly as early as 8,000, modern lions moved into Southeast Europe, including what is now Bulgaria and Greece. They also reached Hungary and Ukraine. Remains of these European lions do not differ from those of modern Asiatic lions. Historical records suggest lions died out in Europe during Classical antiquity, though some have suggested they lasted into the Middle Ages in Ukraine. In South Caucasia the lion became extinct in the 10th century.

  In the Middle East the end came much later. Lions survived into the middle of the 19th century in regions next to Mesopotamia and Syria, and someone still sighted one on the upper Euphrates in the early 1870s. By the late 19th century they were gone from Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The last known lion in Iraq was killed on the lower Tigris in 1918.

  In Iran, lions lived from the Khuzestan Plain to Fars province, below 2000 m, among steppe vegetation and pistachio-almond woodlands. By the 1870s they appeared only on the western slopes of the Zagros Mountains and in forests south of Shiraz. Some of the country's last lions were seen in 1941 between Shiraz and Jahrom. In 1942 one was spotted about 65 km northwest of Dezful. In 1944, the body of a lioness was found on the banks of the Karun River in Khuzestan.

  In the early 19th century, lions in India occurred in Sind, Bahawalpur, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Bihar, and east as far as Palamau and Rewa. The range once reached Bangladesh in the east and the Narmada River in the south. The zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock, struck by the lion's narrow Indian range, assumed it had arrived recently from Europe through Balochistan. Firearms spread, and local extinctions followed.

  Heavy hunting by British colonial officers and Indian rulers drove the decline. Lions were wiped out in Palamau by 1814. Baroda State, Hariana and Ahmedabad district lost theirs in the 1830s, and Kot Diji and Damoh district in the 1840s. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, one British officer shot 300 lions. The last lions of Gwalior and Rewah were shot in the 1860s. One was killed near Allahabad in 1866, and the last lion of Mount Abu was seen in 1872. Rajasthan had none by the late 1870s. By 1880, no lions survived in Guna, Deesa or Palanpur, and only about a dozen remained in Junagadh district. At the turn of the century, the Gir forest held the only Asiatic lions left in India, shielded by the Nawab of Junagarh in his private hunting grounds.

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• 5. Life in the Gir

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  Male Asiatic lions are solitary or join up with as many as three other males in a loose pride. Pairs of males rest, hunt and feed together, and mark the same sites. Females live in a tighter pride of up to twelve other females and their cubs. Females and males usually meet only for the few days of mating.

  A radio telemetry study measured annual home ranges of 144 to 230 km2 for males, and 67 to 85 km2 for females. In hot, dry seasons, lions favour densely vegetated, shady riverside habitat, where prey also gather. Coalitions of males defend ranges that hold one or more female prides, and they keep territory longer than single lions do. In coalitions of three or four males, one dominates the rest. Gir lions spend much of the day resting and grow more active at twilight and through the night.

  The lions of Gir kill chital most often, along with nilgai, sambar and, less often, wild boar. They take sambar when those deer come down from the hills in summer. Outside the protected area, where wild prey is scarce, domestic cattle and water buffalo have long formed a major part of the diet. Lions also visit particular sites to scavenge dead livestock dumped by Maldhari herders. In hot, dry months they have been seen killing mugger crocodiles on the banks of Kamleshwar Dam.

  Most kills happen less than 100 m from water. A lion charges from close range and often jumps onto the back of large prey to bring it down. For smaller animals it may trip the legs, then use its jaws to snap the neck or strangle. The carcass is dragged into dense cover. Females share large carcasses with each other but seldom with males. Dominant males eat about 47% more from a kill than their coalition partners. Lionesses often make kills at times when males are least likely to be around, which keeps the carcass from being shared or stolen. Kleptoparasitism, the stealing of kills, is lower than among African lions.

  Mating peaks in October and November and lasts three to six days, during which the pair mostly do not hunt but only drink. Gestation takes about 110 days and litters hold one to four cubs. Births come about 24 months apart, unless cubs die from infanticide, disease or injury. Cubs become independent at about two years old. Subadult males leave their birth pride by the age of three and roam as nomads until they win a territory of their own.

  A study between December 2012 and December 2016 watched three females switch mating partners in favour of the dominant male. Monitoring of more than 70 matings showed that females mated with males from several rival prides that shared their home ranges, and these males tolerated the same cubs. Only new males that entered a female's territory killed cubs they did not know.

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• 6. Recovery and Risk

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  In 1965, an area of 1412.1 km2 in Saurashtra's Gir forest was declared a sanctuary for Asiatic lion conservation. A national park of 258.71 km2, closed to human activity, was set up afterwards. In the surrounding sanctuary, only the Maldharis may graze their livestock. Gir and neighbouring Girnar are the two hill systems that hold Gujarat's largest tracts of tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest, thorny forest and savanna. Five protected areas now shelter the lions: Gir National Park, and the Gir, Pania, Girnar and Mitiyala Wildlife Sanctuaries. The first three together make the Gir Conservation Area, a forest block of 1452 km2 at the core of the range. A further sanctuary is being created in the nearby Barda Wildlife Sanctuary to serve as an alternative home. Rainfall in the drier, acacia-covered east is about 650 mm a year, and about 1000 mm in the west.

  The numbers tell a story of rebound from the brink. The population reached 411 by 2010, when about 105 lions, a quarter of the total, lived outside the Gir forest. Young dispersing lions founded new territories beyond their birth prides, and the satellite population has grown since 1995. A 2015 estimate of 523 lions covered an area of 7000 km2, with 109 adult males, 201 adult females and 213 cubs. The 2017 census counted about 650. By 2020, at least six satellite populations had spread across eight districts, living in human-dominated land outside the protected areas. Roughly 300 to 325 lions lived within Gir National Park itself. A survey in May 2025 counted 891 lions across 11 districts and 35000 km2. Of these, 394 were in Gir National Park and adjoining areas, and 507 in nine satellite populations and corridor areas. That was 217 more than in 2020, with the range wider by about 5000 km2.

  Habitat recovery helped. Before the Maldharis were resettled, the Gir forest was heavily degraded by livestock that competed with native ungulates. Since the 1970s, resettlement has brought a strong comeback of vegetation. The forest department estimated 9,650 wild ungulates in 1974. The count grew to 31,490 in 1990 and 64,850 in 2010, and chital accounted for 52,490 of them.

  Success carries its own dangers. The Asiatic lion still exists as a single subpopulation, so an epidemic or a large forest fire could devastate it. Poaching incidents have been indicated in recent years, and organized gangs reportedly shifted their attention from Bengal tigers to the lions of Gujarat. Several lions have drowned after falling into wells. In October 2018, nearly 25 lions near the Gir forest were found dead. Four died of canine distemper virus, the same virus that killed several lions in the Serengeti.

  Conflict with people has grown as more lions live outside the park. Farmers guard crops against nilgai, wild boar and other herbivores with high-voltage electric fences. Some see the lions as a benefit because they keep herbivores in check. Others fear them, and some have killed lions in retaliation for attacks on livestock. In July 2012, a lion dragged a man from the veranda of his house and killed him, 50-60 km from Gir National Park. It was the second fatal attack in that area, coming six months after a 25-year-old man was killed in Dhodadar.

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• 7. Second Homes

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  In the 1950s, biologists urged India to re-establish at least one wild lion population within the former range, protecting the species against an epidemic. In 1956, the Indian Board for Wildlife accepted a proposal from the government of Uttar Pradesh to create Chandra Prabha Wildlife Sanctuary, 96 km2 in the eastern part of the state, with a climate and terrain like Gir's. In 1957, one male and two female wild-caught lions were released there. The group numbered 11 in 1965, and then every one of them disappeared.

  A second attempt, the Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project, took shape in the early 1990s. Biologists from the Wildlife Institute of India judged several sites on prey and habitat. Palpur-Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in northern Madhya Pradesh ranked first, ahead of Sita Mata Wildlife Sanctuary and Darrah National Park. By 2000, 1,100 families from 16 villages had been resettled from Palpur-Kuno, with another 500 families from eight villages expected to follow. The protected area grew by 345 km2.

  Gujarat officials resisted the move, since sending lions away would end Gir's standing as the only home of the Asiatic lion. After Gujarat raised several objections, the matter reached the Indian Supreme Court. In April 2013, the court ordered Gujarat to send some Gir lions to Madhya Pradesh to found a second population. The Gujarat government has continued to resist relocation to other states.

  Iran tried as well. In 1977 it planned to move Gir lions to Arzhan National Park, but local people resisted and the project was not carried out. In February 2019, Tehran Zoological Garden received a male Asiatic lion from Bristol Zoo in the United Kingdom. A female arrived from Dublin Zoo that June, and hopes rest on their breeding.

  Captive lions have their own troubled history. Until the late 1990s, Indian zoos haphazardly bred Asiatic lions with African lions confiscated from circuses. When this was found out, the European and American breeding programmes shut down completely, because their founder animals, imported from India, turned out to be hybrids. In North American zoos, researchers noted that in the crosses "the fecundity, reproductive success, and spermatozoal development improved dramatically." Even so, in 2006 the Central Zoo Authority of India stopped breeding the crosses, stating that "hybrid lions have no conservation value and it is not worth to spend resources on them". Only pure native Asiatic lions are bred in India now.

  Breeding records began with the Asiatic lion International Studbook in 1977. The North American Species Survival Plan followed in 1983, built on five founders, two of them African or hybrid. In the early 1990s, London Zoo imported two pairs of pure lions from India, Zürich one pair, and Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki one male and two females. The European Endangered Species Programme began in 1994, and the first European studbook came out in 1999. By 2005 it held 80 lions, and by 2009 more than 100. The North American plan had not resumed, because American zoos still need pure-bred lions to found a new population.

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• 8. The Lion in Culture

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  At the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Central India, Neolithic cave paintings of lions are at least 30,000 years old. Across Asia the lion became a symbol of power and protection. The Sanskrit word for lion is simha, and it also names one of the twelve months of the Hindu calendar and the zodiac sign Leo. Sri Lanka's Sanskrit name, Simhala, means abode of lions. Singapore takes its name from the Malay singa, meaning lion, and pura, meaning city.

  In early Buddhist architecture the lion was an auspicious emblem. Around 250 BCE, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka raised the Lion Capital at Sarnath, with four lions, later the basis of the Emblem of India. In Hindu mythology, Narasimha, half man and half lion, is the fourth of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, and the goddess Durga rides a lion. The lion is the symbol of Mahavira, the 24th and last Tirthankara of Jainism. It features in the Panchatantra, a collection of Indian animal fables translated into Persian, Greek and Hebrew as The Fables of Pilpay between the 8th and 12th centuries. In China, the lion dance is known since at least the Han dynasty and is strongly linked with Buddhism.

  West of India the lion is just as old a symbol. Vases from around 2600 BCE found near Lake Urmia in Iran show lions. A stone relief at Nineveh carries the lion as an emblem of ancient Iraq, and the Ishtar Gate in Babylon bears the lion of Babylon, a symbol of the king. Lions run through the epic of Gilgamesh. In the Book of Judges, Samson fights a lion, and the Lion of Judah, tied to the blessing Jacob gave his son Judah in Genesis, is a Jewish national symbol. The Arabic words asad and sabaʿ both mean lion, and the Arabic name for Beersheba can mean Spring of the Lion.

  Persian kings of the Achaemenid line carried the lion on thrones and garments. The word Shir, meaning lion, appears in place names such as Shiraz. The Lion and Sun, Shir-va-Khorshid, dates back to the Safavid dynasty and flew on the flag of Iran until 1979. Greek myth gave the Nemean lion to the Labours of Hercules, while Rome used lions in damnatio ad bestias, a form of execution, and in games at the Colosseum. Today the four lions of Ashoka's capital stand in the emblem of the same country that shelters the last wild Asiatic lions.

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