The lion king seems to have unlimited glory, sitting on "three wives and four concubines", but in fact his life is tragic, because if a lion wants to be a lion king, he has to go through a life of nine deaths, and finally becoming a lion king will only be short-lived. , because they are always facing challenges from other male lions.

So, will the Lion King be challenged by his own son? If it really happens and the challenge is successful, the female lions in the pride will have their own mothers and sisters. Will they engage in inbreeding? Let’s talk about these two interesting questions together.

If a male lion wants to own a pride and obtain the right to mate, he must challenge other male lions, because all lions on the African savannah have one or more male lions sitting there, and they are called lion kings.

The reason why we mentioned at the beginning that a male lion needs to experience nine deaths if he wants to be the lion king is related to the lion's way of survival. In a lion group, the largest numbers are lionesses and cubs. When the cubs are about 2 years old, both male and female will undergo a major change, that is, expulsion.

Female lions and male lions are the same from birth to 2 years old, but when they are about 2 years old, the adult male lions and lionesses in the pride will drive away the underage male lions (males Lions become sexually mature at 5 years old and female lions at 3 years old). Since the male lions at this time are not yet adults, and they only participate in lion hunting in small numbers, and their hunting ability is not strong, after becoming stray male lions, more than half of the male lions will be killed by other carnivores. Conflict and hunting to death.

This period is one of the most difficult stages for male lions. They have no territory and do not dare to hunt in the territories of other lions. This results in the areas where they can hunt usually having a low prey density. Under normal circumstances, after this cruel survival of the fittest, male lions will not challenge the lion kings of other lions until they are about 6 years old on average, because at this time they are rich in fighting experience, young and restless.

ThisThis brings us to one of our core questions today: Will the wandering lion challenge his "father"? The answer to this question is no. Why do you say that?

After the male lions were driven out of the pride, their choice was not near the original pride, because on the African savannah, the distribution of lion populations is usually relatively dense. This is Determined by prey density, it is obvious that places with greater prey density are more likely to become the territory of lions.

This leads to the fact that stray male lions will be expelled by the lion king of the original lion group near the original lion group, and will still be expelled by the lion kings of other lion groups in nearby areas. In the end, the stray male lions will only You can choose some areas with a smaller density of lions to "grow obscenely". These areas are usually very far away from their original lions. After they grow up, their priority is to challenge the lion king of the lions near the living area, and It’s not a long journey back to the original pride to challenge.

Even if a stray male lion returns to the original lion group, he usually has no chance to challenge his "father" because his "father" has been eliminated by the replacement of the lion king. Why do you say that? Let’s do some math. The age at which a male lion owns a pride is usually about 6 years old. The first thing a male lion does after taking office is to mate. Fortunately, female lions do not have a fixed estrus period during non-pregnancy and lactation periods, so As long as you become a lion king, there is no problem in mating quickly.

After that, the female lion will take about 110 days to give birth to offspring, and the male offspring will be expelled at the age of 2, and return to the original lion group at around 6 years old to challenge. At this time, the lion king Already at least 12 years old. In the wild environment, the average lifespan of a male lion is about 12 years old, which means that the old lion king is most likely dead at this time. Even if he has not died, he has long been challenged by other wandering male lions because he has entered old age. And was driven away (the average replacement cycle of the lion king is about 3 years), so the wandering male lion has no chance to challenge his father, which means that this possibility is usually only found in hypotheses.