For Real Lions, There Is No ‘Lion King’
“The Lion King” has a whole cast of realistic-looking animal characters. But Disney took creative license when it comes to lion behavior and family dynamics, zoologists say.
If the movie were true to big-cat life, the rivalry between Simba’s father, Mufasa, and his uncle, Scar, would not have existed, and the lion cub would not have been forced to flee so young. In fact, Mufasa would not have ruled the pride at all.
“It’s always a matriarch who actually leads a lion pride,” said Craig Saffoe, the curator of great cats at Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. Simba’s mother, Sarabi, would have been a more likely leader. And “The Lion Queen” would be a more accurate name, National Geographic pointed out.
Although male lions appear bigger and more aggressive, females are more dominant, Mr. Saffoe said. They are in charge of the majority of hunting and cub-raising. They also protect their territory against intruding females and decide when to let in new males.
In a typical pride, there are three to six adult females. Most daughters stay with their mother’s pride. There are also two or three adult males. But they spend only a few years with the pride — long enough to produce more offspring — before they seek a new one.
So if Disney had followed typical big cat behavior, Scar and Mufasa would have happily existed together in their pride.
One aspect of lion life that Disney did get right is the affection Mufasa shows his son. Males seem to enjoy getting to know their cubs, with lots of licking, head rubbing and purring involved. “It is ridiculously cute,” Mr. Saffoe said.
When females ovulate, they shed a lot of eggs that may be fertilized by different males. “Fathers can’t tell which cubs are theirs, so they just decide ‘I’ll be nice to all of them’ as a handy rule of thumb,” said Craig Packer, head of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota.
For male cubs, such affection lasts until they are about 2 years old. Then puberty begins, and the surge of testosterone starts threatening the adults. If Mufasa had lived until Simba was 2, he would have run his own son out of the pride. Then Simba would have roamed the savanna until he joined a new pride around the age of 5.
“Male dispersal is an evolutionary mechanism to ensure that genetic diversity remains among lions,” said Dr. Kim Young-Overton, an official with Panthera, a wild cat conservation organization.
There are now fewer than 20,000 lions in Africa, and they are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Dr. Paul Funston, the senior director of Panthera’s lion program, is hoping that the new “The Lion King” movie will help reignite human interest in and compassion for lions.
He said, “Lions have declined by roughly 50 percent since the previous movie,” which was released in 1994.
Mufasa should have been the one to kick Simba out.