On a darkish night time in February, two male lions stood within the shallows of Kazinga Channel in Queen Elizabeth Nationwide Park in Uganda and regarded throughout the water. A couple of mile away was the shore on the opposite aspect. Hippos and 16-foot crocodiles inhabit the channel, which will be 20-feet deep in locations.
Simply 12 hours earlier, each males had misplaced the battle for territory and had been fortunate to nonetheless be alive. It was harmful to dwell on this aspect of the channel, and so they may in all probability hear the lionesses roaring within the distance.
Like many cat species, lions don’t prefer to swim. And one of many lions, recognized to researchers as Jacob, has solely three legs. He misplaced a limb A hunter’s trap in 2020. However neither Jacob nor his brother, Tibu, survived. The 2 massive cats set out for what researchers name the longest-recorded swim ever taken by lions. The scientists describe their findings in a paper that has been accepted for publication within the journal Ecology and Evolution.
The Lions struggled on their first three makes an attempt to cross. Through the second try, the drone that was monitoring them picked up a big thermal signature that might be a crocodile or a hippo in pursuit; The 2 male lions cut up right into a Y formation earlier than shortly retreating to shore.
Lower than an hour after their first try, the 2 went out once more for a 3rd time. The trail appeared clear and so they saved going till they crossed the channel.
“It was very dramatic,” stated Alexander Braczkowski, who has been finding out lions since 2017, working with Australia’s Griffith College and Northern Arizona College.
The Kazinga Channel bisects the Nationwide Park. Dr. Brzezkowski and his workforce had seen Jacob and his brother 3 times on the opposite aspect of the channel, and assumed that the lions had swam between the 2 banks. However they lacked recorded proof of lions swimming.
Lions have been seen swimming in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, however hardly ever greater than 150 toes. In 2012, a lion swam almost 330 toes throughout the Zambezi River from Zimbabwe to Zambia. In November 2023, a younger male lion swims throughout 985 toes of water within the Rufiji River in southern Tanzania. Anecdotal proof suggests lions swim alongside the shores of Lake Kariba (additionally on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe) and one of many lake’s islands, 0.6 miles away, though this has by no means been confirmed on video.
Different massive cats are extra at residence in water. Jaguars are recognized to hunt caimans In rivers in Brazil. A 2022 study reported an almost three-quarter mile swim by a mountain lion in Puget Pontificate the coast of Washington state. In the identical yr A male tiger swims a similar distance throughout the Brahmaputra River in northern India.
However Dr. Braczkowski estimated that two lions swam a few mile throughout Kazinga Channel in Uganda.
Why would lions make such a harmful crossing?
“Intercourse,” stated Craig Packer, who ran the Serengeti Lion Venture for 35 years and was not concerned within the research. “If there is no such thing as a accomplice, what are you doing? You’re a male lion. You do not have a really lengthy life, so you must get on with it, particularly in case you’re injured.
Native situations additionally performed a task. Dr. In line with Brezkowski, the park’s lion inhabitants has declined from 71 lions in 2018 to about 40 at this time, with at the very least 17 lions, principally females, poisoned by close by residents attempting to guard their livestock. is the male Girls are outnumbered two to 1.
“These males and these swimming occasions are signs of this drawback,” Dr. Brzezkowski stated. “Males are usually not getting ladies within the discipline the place that they had tenure. Throughout the Channel they’ll solely be ladies.
In such circumstances, Dr. The Lions could determine to take their probabilities elsewhere, Packer stated.
“If they’ll inform there are ladies and no males, it is going to be, ‘Signal me up! Signal me up!'” she stated.
