What are the characteristics of lions that are different from cats and more similar to canines?

Lions are cats and leopards and have been recognized by experts and scholars for hundreds of years. The so-called lion, more like a dog family, can only be seen by folk animal lovers on the Internet. So, what are the characteristics and habits of lions that are different from other cats, so that these people are expelled from "cats"?

Lions live in groups. The gregarious habits of lions are the most criticized. In the public impression, cats are solitary. In fact, living in groups is not a patent for canines, and living alone is not a characteristic of cats. Besides lions, male cheetahs and female stray cats also have certain social habits. Canine animals, such as jackals and African wild dogs, and loose groups, such as coyotes, wolves and foxes, are in between.

They live in groups, but lions and wolves are very different. Lions are a typical matriarchal group, consisting of iron lions and flowing lions. A group of lions and their female offspring have lived in the same land for generations. Lions will be more like their son-in-law. After living among lions for two or three years, you will be driven away by a stronger alliance.

Wolves are a family group, consisting of parents and offspring. A pack of wolves is essentially a pack of wolves. When the wolf grows into a sub-adult, he helps his parents hunt and takes care of his younger brother and sister.

The core of the lion is the relationship between brothers and sisters. The lion knows that brothers are everything, and the lioness understands the importance of sisters. Husband-wife relationship is the core of wolves, followed by parent-child relationship and brother-sister relationship. So lions are usually lions and lions together, lionesses and lionesses together, and wolves like couples together.

Young lions and young wolves also have different wandering patterns. As a matriarchal group, daughters are born with the right to stay, while sons form alliances to travel. Wolves, whether sons or daughters, will wander when they are 2-4 years old, looking for their other half in the outside world and opening up new territory.

Wolves live in groups for food. They hunt together every day. Lions usually hunt in small groups, and only when foreign lions invade their territory will they gather.

Lion expert Parker found that lions who live alone can have plenty of food and clothing, and because they don't need to share food with their companions, their lives are more moist. Therefore, Dr. Parker concluded that the reason why lions live in groups is not group hunting.

The study found that the League of Wandering Lions in Kruger National Park mainly hunted by itself and fed on African bison. Wandering is a necessary stage for the growth of the Young Lions League. If, as some people say, lions have no hunting ability, wandering will starve to death, and lions have long been extinct.

Wolves in the zoo have a linear hierarchy, the first wolf, the second wolf, the third wolf and even the first wolf. At least the first wolf in the wild and his wife are clear. However, there seems to be no clear hierarchy between lions, whether male or female, so experts exclaimed that lions found peace without hierarchy.

Among wolves, usually only the first couple have the right to mate, and the mating of other wolves is inhibited. At least every lioness in the pride has the right to breed. Although sometimes the Lions Brothers fight for the right to mate, on the whole, everyone has a chance.

Wolves are real social animals, and a group of wolves is like a family. Lions are more like a village collective. We just live together and are partners. Except for a few close members, everyone is like a neighbor.

Lions are much looser than wolves, but they are bigger. A group of lions has 3- 18 adult females, 1-7 adult males, and many cubs. A pack of wolves usually has only 2- 12 individuals.

Lions are often compared with another top cat, the tiger. Song Kuisi, a tiger expert, found that the tiger society is another form of matriarchal organization, which is not essentially different from the lion.

Blood-related females live next door, and their mothers, daughters, sisters, menstruation and nieces all live together. The genetic index of the adjacent lioness is 0.35, which is similar to that of the same lioness. Each male tiger's territory covers 2-7 females and monopolizes the mating rights with these females. Professor Song Quest said that tigers are scattered lions, while lions gather tigers.

Tigers also have a mechanism similar to lions. When young females grow up, they will stay with their mothers, and sometimes mothers will even give up part of their territory for their daughters to live in. If their mother dies, the territory will be inherited by their daughter. The young male tiger had to leave his home and travel alone.

Why do tigers choose to live alone and lions choose to live in groups, because they are also big cats and matriarchal social organizations? It turns out that lions live in the open African grasslands with high prey density, especially the pressure of large prey, vultures, hyenas and other scavengers, which urges lions to live in groups.

Professor Song Kuist, who studies tigers in Wang Chi National Park, said that if the floodplain here is wide enough to support more abundant large prey, and it is better to have the pressure of scavengers, then these neighboring female tigers will soon find the superiority of living in groups, thus forming a tiger group.

Because individual lions can support themselves, it may be accidental that lions live in groups in the process of evolution. However, once lions live in groups, they will bring great pressure to the solitary people, because even if their companions are parasites, they can still help seize territory. Under the pressure of natural selection, more and more lions will live in groups. Once they live in groups, they will never return to their original solitary life.

Dr. Parker once observed a lonely lioness. She lived very well alone. However, without the help of her sisters, she can't keep any land, so she can only wander in the territory of other lions and live a life of fear every day.

With the deepening of research, more and more experts find that solitary cats such as tigers and lynxes are not lonely. Besides mating couples and females taking care of their children, they also have a rich social life. For example, males and females will go together during the non-breeding season, and sub-adult offspring can continue to be taken care of by their mothers after their new litter is born, and their fathers will also take part in taking care of their cubs.

Wandering domestic cats can live in groups quickly in places with rich sources of artificial food. Several generations of female lineal relatives of the same female cat form a stable and harmonious cat group, guarding the territory like a lion and raising their young. It can be seen that there is no strict boundary between living alone and living in groups, and the social organization mode of cats is very flexible.

To sum up, although lions choose to live in groups, they are completely different from canines and still live a typical feline social life. Living in groups enables lions to exist in a much higher density than tigers and leopards, greatly enhancing their environmental adaptability and reducing the risk of extinction, which is a great advantage.

Lions have long faces and long legs. Some people say that lions have long faces and long legs. They are not like cats, but like dogs. Is it true?/You don't say.

Domestic cats are the most common cats, and the public's impression of cats is largely derived from domestic cats. Domestic cats have short and round faces, and the ratio of total skull length (maximum skull length) to zygomatic bone width (maximum skull width) is 1.40, while the ratio of tigers is similar to cats, which is 1.39, so tigers look like cats.

We found that the lion's head is indeed longer than that of tigers and domestic cats, and the ratio of skull length to cheekbone width is 1.53. The proportion of leopards who are also big cats is as high as 1.62, indicating that the face of leopards is longer than that of lions. Generally speaking, the big cats of Leopard subfamily have long heads, because they have long snouts and developed sagittal ridges behind their heads (for masseter muscle attachment).

Catinae is not all short-faced, for example, a close relative of domestic cats, the jungle cat, has a ratio of skull length to cheekbone width of 1.55438+0, which is similar to that of a lion. It can be seen that the aspect ratio of the lion's head is completely normal in cats.

However, the skull of a canine wolf is wider than the cheekbones 1.85, indicating that the canine is the real long face.

We can use the ratio of shoulder height to body length to measure the length of an animal's leg relative to its body. I measured it on the spot. My cat's shoulder height is 30 cm, its body length is 64 cm, and its shoulder height is only 46.9% of its body length. My cat really has short legs.

The shoulder height of a lion is 52.8% of its body length, that of a tiger is 49.5%, and that of a leopard is 5 1.5%. Although there is a saying on the Internet that "the tiger is long and the lion is high", it seems that there is not much difference between the two.

The real long legs in cats are cheetahs and servcats. The shoulder height of cheetah is 665,438+0.5% of body length, and servcats is as high as 65.4%. The shoulder height of canine wolves is 65.3% of their body length. It can be seen that the cat's legs are indeed longer than the wolf's, but the lion is still far behind.

To sum up, the lion's face length and leg length are only relative to domestic cats and tigers, which are completely within the normal range in cats.

Lions have manes and no stripes.

Some people say that the lion's mane is quite unique among cats, and the lion's whole body is khaki, which is not as rich in color as other big cats. The friend who said this only knows one thing and doesn't know another.

The lion's mane is only a secondary sexual characteristic, which is related to sexual selection. Mane appears in many distant mammals, such as lions, hyenas, pigs and horses, and it has no taxonomic significance. Similarly, the male leopard has drooping skin on his neck, and the male tiger and the male cat have facial manes, which are all the same. What the cat owner said is actually to let the male cat give birth to a mane.

The color patterns of cats can be roughly divided into three categories: spotted cats, solid-colored cats and striped cats. Spotted cats are the most common. Leopard, jaguar, snow leopard, cheetah, clouded leopard, leopard cat, tiger cat, serval cat, fishing cat and clouded cat are all tabby cats. Solid color cats are also very common, including lions, cougars, Karakal, African golden cats, Borneo golden cats, thin waist cats and so on. Striped cats are the least common, and there are only two typical types (including wild cats and domestic cats).

There is no insurmountable boundary between a tabby cat and a solid color cat. For example, Eurasian lynx and Asian golden cat have spots and solid colors.

Although adult lions are pure-colored cats, young lions are born with dense spots, which completely fade when they are two or three years old. Some lions will keep black spots on their bellies for life. Now we know that the ancestors of lions had spots like leopards, but later they came to live in the grassland and the spots degenerated. The situation of puma is similar to that of lion.

Stripes are very rare in cats. Apart from tigers and cats, only close relatives of domestic cats, jungle cats and sand cats have a few dim stripes on their legs.

Therefore, from the perspective of body color, lions are normal in cats, but tigers have become an alternative.

Lions are authentic cats. Whether a lion is a cat has never been disputed in academic circles. Classical taxonomists have analyzed the skull anatomical structures of lions, tigers and leopards, and found that they are very similar, so they all belong to the genus leopards. As a star species, their differences have been artificially amplified by the public.

Now molecular genetic research shows that lions and leopards are the closest relatives, followed by jaguars, whose ancestors lived more than 3 million years ago. Tigers are far away from them, but they gather with snow leopards. The two branches of the leopard parted ways 4 million years ago.

Lions are fine cats, and the theory of lions and dogs is the product of online liger fights. As the saying goes, three people make a tiger, and people actually believe it when it spreads.

Some avid tiger lovers want to belittle lions and call them canines. In fact, even canines, canines and cats are spirits of nature. Their different characteristics and habits are the result of adapting to their own living environment and lifestyle. We shouldn't favour one over the other.

I hope that the vast number of animal lovers on the internet can jump out of the misunderstanding of "seeking greatness and strength", understand animals scientifically and rationally, and do not make rumors, rumors or believe rumors.