African Lion

Through training, lions voluntarily stand on scales for weights and open their mouths and present specific body parts for inspection by veterinarians.  They also accept vaccine injections and allow blood draws from their tail.

Lions, leopards, and other charismatic large carnivores are declining across Africa. The North Carolina Zoo works towards reversing these declines by equipping conservation staff on the ground with technology to more easily collect information on threats to large cats and other threatened wildlife. By streamlining data collection and reporting efforts in the savannas of southern and western Africa, the Zoo thereby enables protected area managers to make better informed decisions about how best to protect wildlife from illegal activities. You can read more about the Zoo’s work on wild lions and other large African carnivores below, under related resources.

• Only cat that is social, living in "prides" made up of a dominant male, several females, and their offspring.
• Males eat first after a kill, followed by the females and then offspring.
• Mane on males make them look larger and protects their throat during an attack.