How Lions Hunt

When it comes to lions,《The Lion King》comes to my mind. Nonetheless, the fact of the lion society is totally different from the content of this movie. Actually, lionesses are important roles in lion prides, for they would not leave lion prides in their lifetime. Besides, in lion prides, the female lions are in charge of hunting. In order to increase the successful rate of hunting, lionesses are inclined to cooperate with each other; hence, we seldom see a female lion hunt the prey. The processes of lion hunting can be categorized into ambush, kill, and distribution.

As the matter of fact, the most prevailing method for lion prides to hunt is ambush because lions lack endurance to chase the prey at long distance. First of all, lionesses would choose a place to wait for the quarry to appear Later, they would assign a female lion to pursue this prey, so this hunting object would be lured into a trap. In the meanwhile, as soon as the other lionesses see this situation, they would encircle the prey immediately to prevent it from escaping.

Furthermore, lion prides usually ambush near the pond since a lot of animals would head over to there for water.

Afterwards, lionesses would do their best to make the prey die or faint. According to Wikipedia’s record about lions’ food, we can know undoubtedly how strong the lions’ muscular power is, so lions can dash and pounce on the quarry. Thus, if female lions enclose their prey, their first step is to kill it by their formidable teeth and paws. Furthermore, these fierce lionesses are pretty smart as they understand to adjust their attack types when they encounter

different kind of prey. For instance, lionesses would try to compel the buffalo to full over before they bite the buffalo’s throat and make it suffocate.

After finishing these boring processes of waiting, running and killing, the star turns, food’s distribution, is coming. Experiencing these extremely exhausting and intense hunting activities, female lions must really crave food. However, they do not have the priority to enjoy the feast. Because the lion king is the genuine dominator in a lion pride, it can take precedence to have the feast over the other lions. As for the rest allocation of quarry, the next who has right to appease its hungry is the highest-ranking lioness, and the final belongs to the young lion. Based on the order of assignment of food, it is obvious that hierarchy exists in lion prides and influences the food distribution.

Sources

老虎王國 (2018) 獅子的狩獵技巧分析 Retrieved from

https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/news/28aeory.html

Wikipedia-Lion. Retrieved from

https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E7%8B%AE

With these depictions, we can clearly know that in order to earn food, lions are very arduous to gain the resource. They should map out a series of ambush activities, and then they have to make sure the prey’s death. In the end, they still keep their energy to distribute the food. These hunting processes show not only lions’ fortitude and boldness but also their social hierarchy. Besides, lions’ instincts and survival of the fittest can also be found in these processes of lion hunting.