Click here to learn about Lions and the Masai in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

We've added audio! Follow this link to hear lions roaring.

A lioness scratches a tree and stretches while a playful cub attacks her from behind.

NEWS

Group formation stabilizes predator-prey dynamics

This week in Nature (25 October 2007, Vol 449, p.1041-44), read about our collaborative work with John Fryxell (University of Guelph) and Anthony Sinclair (University of British Columbia), exploring the significance of group formation in predator-prey interactions.

    See also:

      Nature - News & Views: Group living and hungry lions by Tim Coulson

      NSF press release: Forming Groups Stabilizes Populations of Predators and Prey

Disease Transmission among Serengeti’s Carnivores

Meggan Craft's Ph.D. research looks at how diseases are spread between wild carnivores.

Understanding lion-human conflict

Graduate student, Hadas Kushnir, is studying  the human side of lion-human conflict in southeastern Tanzania.

Lion Attacks on the Rise in Tanzania (pdf)
Lion attacks are on the rise in Tanzania as reported in a new article published in Nature by Craig Packer, Dennis Ikanda, Bernard Kissui, and Hadas Kushnir. Understanding the timing and distribution of attacks on rural communities may help to prevent them.

Bush pigs lure lions to homesteads where they attack farmers. Lions are killing people in Tanzania three times as often as they did 15 years ago, according to a survey. The authors of the study say that farmers should clear their land of bush pigs, an attractive prey to lions, to reduce the number of clashes between lions and local people.

Savannas Forever

Learn about the new organization, Savannas Forever, working to incorporate reduction of human-wildlife conflict as an integral part of wildlife conservation.

Planning for success: Serengeti lions seek prey accessibility rather than abundance (pdf)
We used long-term radio-telemetry data to investigate how Serengeti lions distribute themselves with respect to hunting opportunities. Specifically, we investigate whether lions hunt in areas where prey are easy to capture, or where prey are locally abundant.

Ecological Change, Group Territoriality, and Population Dynamics in Serengeti Lions (pdf)
Territorial behavior is expected to buffer populations against short-term environmental perturbations, but we have found that group living in African lions causes a complex response to long-term ecological change.

Top-down population regulation of a top predator (pdf)
Bernard Kissui and Craig Packer report on why the population of the lions in the Ngorongoro Crater seems to be remaining well below the point where density-dependent regulation occurs. Read the entire article online.

Database of articles
A partial database of articles by Dr. Packer and colleagues is now available. All articles are in PDF format and require the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com).

Spatial analysis and group territoriality
Anna Mosser is using GIS to study the role of territory defense in the evolution of sociality in lions. Here she describes some of her methods and objectives.

Why do lions have manes?
Our mane research is the subject of an article in today's SCIENCE. Click here to learn more about our findings and to read the paper online.

Behavior Guide

Learn about lion behavior.