Barbary lion

• 1. The Last Shot

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  The last recorded shooting of a wild Barbary lion took place in 1942, near Tizi n'Tichka in the Moroccan part of the Atlas Mountains. After that, the trail goes cold. The Barbary lion was also called the North African lion, the Atlas lion, and the Egyptian lion. Today it is locally extinct. Yet the animal's story did not end with its disappearance, because scientists have kept arguing about what it actually was. Was it ever truly a separate kind of lion? Where did it live, and what did it hunt? How did people manage to remove a large predator from an entire region? And does any trace of it survive in the lions of zoos today?

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• 2. Territory and Prey

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  Fossils found in the cave of Bizmoune, near Essaouira, show that lions lived in Morocco between 100,000 and 110,000 years ago. Later records describe an animal of Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub, and of mountains and deserts stretching from Morocco to Egypt. The westernmost sighting reportedly came from the Anti-Atlas in western Morocco. Elsewhere it ranged across the Atlas Mountains and the Rif in Morocco, the Ksour and Amour Ranges in Algeria, and the Aurès Mountains.

  In Algeria, sightings clustered in the forested hills between Ouarsenis in the west, the Chelif River plains in the north, and the Pic de Taza in the east. Lions also lived in the wooded hills of Constantine Province, and southward into the Aurès.

  Egypt offers a different picture. Historical accounts place lions in the Sinai Peninsula, along the Nile, and in the Eastern and Western Deserts. They also lived around Wadi El Natrun and along the Mediterranean coast. In the 14th century BC, Thutmose IV hunted lions in the hills near Memphis. By the start of the second millennium BC, growing civilizations along the Nile and in Sinai, together with desertification, were isolating lion populations.

  Sightings logged from 1839 onward involve solitary animals, pairs, and family units. In the early 20th century, when the lions were rare, observers saw a male and female with one or two cubs. Analysis of these records suggests that the lions kept living in prides even under heavy persecution, especially in the eastern Maghreb. Those prides were probably about as large as prides in sub-Saharan habitats. The overall density of lions was lower than in moister regions.

  When the Barbary stag and gazelles became scarce in the Atlas Mountains, the lions turned to herds of carefully tended livestock. They also preyed on wild boar. Their neighbours at the top of the food chain were the African leopard and the Atlas bear. Raiding tended herds put the lions in conflict with people, and the records of that conflict are dated with surprising precision.

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• 3. Bounties and Firearms

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  Libya lost its coastal lions first, since they persisted there only until the beginning of the 18th century. By the 1830s, lions may also have been eliminated along the Mediterranean coast of the Maghreb and near human settlements. Two forces drove the loss. Firearms were spreading, and bounties were being paid for shooting lions. By the mid-19th century, the population had massively declined.

  The cedar forests of Chelia and neighbouring mountains in Algeria sheltered lions until about 1884. After that, the losses came in quick succession. The lion disappeared from the Bône region by 1890, and from Tunisia in the same year. Khroumire and Souk Ahras followed in 1891, and Batna Province in 1893.

  A review of hunting and sighting records suggests that small groups may have clung on after those dates. A relict population could have survived in remote mountain areas into the early 1960s. The last known sighting of a lion in Algeria occurred in 1956, in Beni Ourtilane District. Small groups may have lasted in Algeria until the early 1960s, and in Morocco until the mid-1960s. With the wild animals gone, museum skins and skulls became the main evidence of what the Barbary lion looked like.

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• 4. Manes and Measurements

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  Stuffed males in zoological collections measure between 2.35 and 2.8 metres from head to tail, while females measure around 2.5 metres. Skull size ranged from 30.85 to 37.23 centimetres. Specimens vary in colour from light to dark tawny. Male skins carry manes of different colours and lengths. Some manes stretched over the shoulder and under the belly as far as the elbows, with hair 8 to 22 centimetres long.

  Hunters in the 19th century claimed that wild males weighed between 270 and 300 kilograms. That would have made the Barbary lion the largest of all lions. The accuracy of such field measurements is questionable. Captive Barbary lions were much smaller, though they were kept in such poor conditions that they may never have reached their full size and weight.

  The mane was long treated as proof that these lions deserved a subspecies of their own. One idea is that the long hair developed because the Atlas Mountains are cooler than other African regions, particularly in winter. A long-term study in Serengeti National Park found that temperature, nutrition, and testosterone all influence the colour and size of lion manes. Mane development also varies with age and between individuals from different regions. For these reasons, mane size is not regarded as evidence of Barbary ancestry. Zoologists needed a different kind of evidence, and they eventually found it in the cells of museum specimens.

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• 5. Naming the Lion

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  Carl Linnaeus proposed the scientific name Felis leo in 1758, basing it on a type specimen from Constantine, Algeria. So the species itself was first described from Barbary lion country. In the 19th century, several North African specimens were proposed as subspecies. In 1826, the Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer described Felis leo barbaricus from a lion skin from the Barbary Coast.

  In 1843, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville described Felis leo nubicus. This was a male lion from Nubia that Antoine Clot had sent from Cairo to Paris. It died in the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in 1841.

  In 1930, Reginald Innes Pocock placed the lion in the genus Panthera, while writing about the Asiatic lion. Then the arguments began. In 1939, Glover Morrill Allen treated barbaricus and nubicus as the same as Felis leo leo. In 1951, John Ellerman and Terence Morrison-Scott recognized only two lion subspecies in the Palearctic realm. These were the African lion Panthera leo leo and the Asiatic lion P. l. persica. Some authors considered nubicus valid and identical to P. l. massaica.

  In 2005, barbarica, nubica and somaliensis were folded into P. l. leo. In 2016, IUCN Red List assessors used P. l. leo for all lion populations in Africa. In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the Cat Specialist Group went further. It merged the lions of North, West and Central Africa and Asia into P. l. leo, the northern lion. After that, the Barbary lion was no longer a distinct subspecies. That decision rested on morphological and genetic analyses of North African lion samples.

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• 6. What the DNA Says

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  A phylogeographic analysis published in 2006 included a vertebra from the National Museum of Natural History in France. It came from the Nubian part of Sudan. Its mitochondrial DNA grouped with lion skull samples from the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, and the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The historical Barbary lion was morphologically distinct, but its genetic uniqueness remained questionable.

  A 2008 study of lion evolution examined 357 samples of wild and captive lions from Africa and India. Four captive lions from Morocco showed no unique genetic trait. They shared mitochondrial haplotypes with lions from West and Central Africa. All of them belonged to a major mtDNA grouping that also included Asiatic lions.

  The results supported the idea that this group arose in East Africa. About 118,000 years ago, it travelled north and west in the first wave of lion expansion. It later broke up within Africa, and then in West Asia. Lions in Africa probably form a single population that interbred through several waves of migration since the Late Pleistocene.

  Genome-wide data from a wild-born historical lion from Sudan told a more tangled story. It clustered with P. l. leo in mtDNA-based family trees, but showed a high affinity to P. l. melanochaita. A comprehensive study published in 2016 confirmed the close relationship between the extinct Barbary lions and lions from Central and West Africa. It also showed that they fall into the same subclade as the Asiatic lion.

  Still, one result keeps the Barbary lion distinct in the lab. Mitochondrial DNA research found a unique haplotype in museum specimens thought to be of Barbary descent. Its presence is considered a reliable molecular marker for identifying captive Barbary lions. That marker is what allows researchers to trace Barbary ancestry inside zoos.

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• 7. Captive Descendants

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  Two well-preserved skulls excavated at the Tower of London in 1936 and 1937 gave DNA testing something to work with. The tests showed that the lions of the medieval Tower menagerie were Barbary lions. Radiocarbon dating placed the skulls at around 1280-1385 and 1420-1480. In 1835, the Tower lions were moved to improved enclosures at London Zoo on the orders of the Duke of Wellington. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, lions were often kept in hotels and circus menageries.

  The lions of Rabat Zoo showed features thought typical of the Barbary lion. Nobles and Berber people presented lions as gifts to the royal family of Morocco. When the family was forced into exile in 1953, the 21 lions in Rabat were sent to two zoos in the region. Three went to Casablanca, and the rest went to Meknès. The Meknès lions were moved back to the palace in 1955, but those at Casablanca never returned. In the late 1960s, new lion enclosures were built in Temara near Rabat.

  At the beginning of the 21st century, Addis Ababa Zoo kept 16 adult lions. With dark brown manes extending through the front legs, they looked like Barbary or Cape lions. Their ancestors were caught in southwestern Ethiopia for a zoological collection belonging to Emperor Haile Selassie. Mitochondrial DNA research revealed in 2006 that a lion at the Neuwied Zoo in Germany came from this collection. It was likely a descendant of a Barbary lion. Five other lion samples from the collection were not Barbary lions on the maternal line.

  Barbary genes are likely present in common European zoo lions, because this was one of the most frequently introduced subspecies. Many lions in European and American zoos are managed without any subspecies classification, and most are probably descendants of Barbary lions. Several researchers and zoos supported developing a studbook of lions descended directly from the King of Morocco's collection.

  Since 2005, Belfast Zoo has kept three Barbary lions, one male and two females, obtained from Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. A new Barbary lion enclosure opened there in 2023. In 2026, both of the female lions were euthanized.

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• 8. Lions in Myth and Sport

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  Statues and statuettes of lions found at Hierakonpolis and Koptos in Upper Egypt date to the Early Dynastic Period. The lion appeared often in early Egyptian art and literature. The early deity Mehit was depicted with a lion's head. Sekhmet, the lion-headed deity, was venerated as a protector of the country. She represented destructive power, but she was also seen as a protector against famine and disease.

  Lion-headed figures and amulets linked to Sekhmet were excavated in tombs on Crete, Euboea, Rhodes, Paros, and Chios. They date to the early Iron Age, between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Real lions turn up in Egyptian tombs too. The remains of seven mostly subadult lions were excavated at the necropolis of Umm El Qa'ab, in a tomb of Hor-Aha dated to the 31st century BC.

  In 2001, archaeologists found the skeleton of a mummified lion in the tomb of Maïa. The tomb lies in a necropolis dedicated to Tutankhamun at Saqqara. The animal had probably lived and died in the Ptolemaic period. It showed signs of malnutrition and had probably spent many years in captivity.

  The lion is also a symbol in Nubian culture and was often depicted in art and architecture. In Kushite religion, Nubian deities such as Amun, Amesemi, Apedemak, Arensnuphis, Hathor, Bastet, Dedun, Mehit, Menhit, and Sebiumeker were shown as lion protectors. In Roman North Africa, experienced hunters regularly captured lions for venatio spectacles in amphitheatres.

  The name lives on in modern sport. The Morocco national football team is known as the Atlas Lions, and its supporters are usually seen in T-shirts printed with a lion's face, or even in full lion suits.

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