Brotherly Love
by Sandra Bronstein
Title
Brotherly Love
Artist
Sandra Bronstein
Medium
Photograph - Photography - Fine Art Photography - Digital Art
Description
© 2014 Sandra Bronstein Photography. All Rights Reserved.
These two handsome male lions are believed to be brothers and due to the color of the manes, they are young. They watched us for quite awhile before they decided to stroll off.
Lions are the only members of the cat family to display obvious sexual dimorphism – that is, males and females look distinctly different. They also have specific roles that each gender plays in the pride. The lioness, the hunter, lacks the male's thick mane. The color of the male's mane varies from blond to black, generally becoming darker as the lion grows older. The most distinctive characteristic shared by both females and males is that the tail ends in a hairy tuft. In some lions, the tuft conceals a hard "spine", formed of the final sections of tail bone fused together. The lion is the only big cat to have a tufted tail and its function is unknown. Absent at birth, the tuft develops around 5½ months of age and is readily identifiable at 7 months.
Lions are the most socially inclined of all wild cats, most of which remain quite solitary in nature. The lion is a predatory carnivore with two types of social organization. Some lions are residents, living in groups centering around related lionesses, called prides. Females form the stable social unit in a pride and do not tolerate outside females. Members only changes with the births and deaths of lionesses. The pride usually consists of five or six females, their cubs of both sexes, and one or two males who mate with the adult females. The number of adult males in a coalition is usually two, but may increase to four and decrease again over time. Male cubs are excluded from their maternal pride when they reach maturity at around 2–3 years of age.
Uploaded
May 5th, 2014
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Viewed 315 Times - Last Visitor from Ottawa, ON - Canada on 04/23/2024 at 3:22 PM
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