Barber lion
The Berber lion , Atlas lion or Nubian lion refers to a population of the lion that was originally considered a separate subspecies. It was native to North Africa until the 20th century and is now extinct in the wild. Today it belongs to the northern subspecies of the lion Panthera leo leo , which is common in the northern half of Africa and Asia.
features
With a weight of the males from 181 to 295 kg and of the females from 120 to 181 kg, the Berber lion was next to the extinct Cape lion the largest recent subspecies of the lion. The most striking feature of the adult male was the particularly strong, dark mane that stretched far over the shoulders and hung down on the stomach like a curtain.
Previously, the barber lion phenotype was seen as an indication of its justified status as a subspecies. However, according to recent research, the appearance of these animals can also be due to external circumstances. The thick mane would only be an adaptation to the colder surroundings. Regardless of the subspecies, lions develop thicker manes when they live in colder climates, such as in central European zoos.
Subspecies status
The Berber lion has traditionally been considered a subspecies of the lion . This subspecies was used by Carl von Linné in 1758 to classify the lion ( Panthera leo ) and is therefore the nominotypical taxon ("nominate form") of this species. However, the status as an independent subspecies cannot be confirmed by the latest genetic analyzes, as there are genetic differences to the Asiatic lion not enough to distinguish the two. The genetic differences to the closely related West African lions and Central African lions are also small. Today the North African-Asiatic lion clade, together with the West African and Central African clade, make up the subspecies P. l. leo summarized.
History and dissemination
The Berber lion inhabited the entire north of the African continent north of the Sahara until historical times. He was often used in the Roman arenas , where he also fought the Caspian Tiger , which is also extinct. Historical sources show that it had largely disappeared from northeast Africa at the beginning of the 18th century and was then almost only found in the northwest. The spread of firearms and a targeted extermination policy ensured that stocks in the western part of its former area of distribution had also decreased significantly by the middle of the 19th century. The last known Berber lion living in the wild was shot in 1920 in the Moroccan part of the Atlas Mountains . The other great predators of North Africa suffered a similar fate. The Berber leopard has become very rare and the atlas bear is completely extinct.
Way of life
In addition to the North African semi-deserts and steppe areas, the Berber lion also inhabited forests and the Atlas Mountains. In addition to deer and wild boar , the North African subspecies of the hartebeest was probably one of its main prey.
Berber lions in captivity
The Berber lion has been kept in captivity since the Middle Ages due to its geographical proximity to Europe. At the end of the 19th century, the London Zoo still held a pure-blooded Berber lion named Sultan. However, when the wild Berber lions disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, there were no longer any known pure-bred populations in European zoos. Only the lions from the Rabat Zoo , which the Moroccan King Hassan II left the zoo in 1970, seemed to go back directly to lions from North Africa. The morphology of these lions was pretty much the historical description of Berber lions. In 1998, 52 lions, which can be traced back to the Sultan's animals, lived in the Rabat Zoo and in 13 different locations in Europe. Descendants of these lions are bred in various zoos and are marked as Berber lions. However, genetic analyzes speak against a pure descent of these lions from North African lions. Apparently animals from Central Africa and Ethiopia were crossed, so that these animals are probably not pure-blooded either. In various zoos and circuses there are numerous lions without subspecies status, some of which can also be traced back to Berber lions, even if it is highly likely that they are not homozygous. Today there are breeds that correspond to the external characteristics of the Berber lions, but probably only contain parts of the genetic material of the subspecies.
literature
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .
- David Macdonald: The Great Encyclopedia of Mammals . Könemann in Tandem Verlag GmbH, Königswinter 2004, ISBN 3-8331-1006-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Laura D. Bertola, H. Jongbloed, KJ van der Gaag, P. de Knijff, N. Yamaguchi, H. Hooghiemstra, H. Bauer, P. Henschel, PA White, CA Driscoll, T. Tende, U. Ottosson, Y. Saidu, K. Vrieling & HH de Longh: Phylogeographic patterns in Africa and high resolution delineation of genetic clades in the lion (Panthera leo). Scientific Reports 6: 30807 August 2016, DOI: 10.1038 / srep30807
- ↑ Kitchener, AC; Breitenmoser sausages, C .; Eizirik, E .; Gentry, A .; Werdelin, L .; Wilting, A .; Yamaguchi, N .; Abramov, AV; Christiansen, P .; Driscoll, C .; Duckworth, JW; Johnson, W .; Luo, S.-J .; Meijaard, E .; O'Donoghue, P .; Sanderson, J .; Seymour, K .; Bruford, M .; Groves, C .; Hoffmann, M .; Nowell, K .; Timmons, Z. & Tobe, S. (2017). " A revised taxonomy of the Felidae: The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group " (PDF). Cat News (Special Issue 11): 71-73.
- ↑ Nowak, RM (1999) p. 834 online
- ↑ Black, S., Yamaguchi, N., Harland, A., & Groombridge, J. (2010). Maintaining the genetic health of putative Barbary lions in captivity: an analysis of Moroccan Royal Lions. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 56 (1), 21-31.
- ↑ Barnett, R., Yamaguchi, N., Barnes, I., & Cooper, A. (2006). Lost populations and preserving genetic diversity in the lion Panthera leo: Implications for its ex situ conservation. Conservation Genetics, 7 (4), 507-514.
Web links
- Joachim Burger, Helmut Hemmer (2005): Urgent Call for Further Breeding of the Relic Zoo Population of the Critically Endangered Barbary Lion [Panthera leo leo (Linnaeus 1758)] . European Journal of Wildlife Research. 2005, 51: 4 PDF