Hello everyone! Ashyak here with another tutorial! This time, instead of rats and mice or dragons, I'll be teaching you how to roleplay lions correctly!
With the abundance of lions around the game, you would be surprised on how little known their behaviors actually are. Today, I'll be changing that!
Lions are the only social big cat and the only cat known to form groups! Lion prides are usually lead by one or two males and are followed by the abundance of females. I'll be showing you the pros and cons of being a lion of each sex and I'll dive in to more touchier topics such as the subject of infanticide within prides and the general truth about color morphs and hybridilazation.
PROS OF BEING A MALE LION- You get to be the leader.
- You might share the pride with your brother!
- You're the most powerful!
- You get to be lazy and sleep all day. (my dream xD)
- You have the loudest roar.
- If you're looking for a pride, you get to band up with other loner males and become a gang known as a bachelor!
- You get aallll the girls!
- You fight other males who may take over your pride!
- You get the first bite of the kill! Yum!
CONS OF BEING A MALE LION- You risk losing your pride if you're old.
- You either leave or you get kicked out if you've reached /maturity./
- You can't mate with anymore females once you've already done your share! (Simba that's your cOUSIN)
- You don't do as much caring for the cubs as the females do. (is this a pro or a con?)
PROS OF BEING A FEMALE LION- You can stay in the pride until you become in heat, which is when you are not kicked out, but you leave the pride yourself!
- You can care for the kids. Old or don't have cubs? Congratulations, you're a nanny!
- You're the most aggressive and you do the most activity, like hunting.
- It might not seem like it, but without lionesses, the pride would fall flat on its face!
CONS OF BEING A FEMALE LION- You don't eat first.
- If another male takes over your pride and you are unlucky enough to be pregnant or already have cubs, they will immediately be killed by the new male! If you're already pregnant, the new male waits for you to give birth and will then kill those cubs before mating with you to ensure his cubs will be the strongest! Don't get too attached.
- Speaking of that, if you do decide to leave your pride to protect your cubs, you and your cubs have very little chance of surviving. What'd I say about not getting too attached?
- As soon as you're in heat, you'll probably need to leave the pride. That is if the male is /blood related/ to you, and if he isn't, he'll be your new mate.
- Sorry, but you don't get to rule the pride! You may do the most work, but the male lion is always on top.
And now we get to the diet!
Lions are carnivores, meaning that meat makes up most of their diet. Despite this, some lions have been recording munching on a /small/ amount of plant matter! However, this is extremely unhealthy and is only recommended if you have nothing to eat. You usually get this from your kill though, so don't worry about accidentally ingesting a thorn bush.
Lions mainly eat zebra and gazelle, but they can eat larger prey such as water buffalo.
Lone males will usually scavenge if they don't have another with them, and will consume a larger amount of plants /themselves/ than lions in a pride. (Though, as I said, it isn't recommended.) Male lions generally don't hunt because they need to save their strength juuust in case a rogue male struts in acting like he's the boss. That isn't to say that male lions /in a pride/ cannot hunt; they just don't need to.
Note to everybody, I don't want to hear about your lion "taking down an elephant or giraffe because they're so powerful wOw" because they DON'T. Let's just lay that flat out there. Lions /almost/ never try to attack adult giraffes because one kick can send them flying 30 feet and will KILL THEM. That doesn't mean they can't, though. Elephants are only killed if its a lone elephant and if that elephant is young, sick, or dying.
HYBRIDS AND COLOR MORPHSNow here's where things get touchy and disturbing. I will be hiding this because, well, its graphic to say the least.
I won't get highly technical into how things are done because that is /too disturbing and waayy innapropriate for a forum little kids are peering at,/ but I will get into the basics. And the basics are disturbing enough as is.
Spoiler
So here's where I teach you disturbing things you probably didn't know and didn't want to know!
So before I go into detail, let me say this: White lions are NOT healthy. And I'll tell you why in a minute!
And take note that the whole White Lion ordeal also applies to white tigers, snow (stripeless) tigers, and tabby (orange-striped) tigers.
WHITE LIONS
I'm just making a whole new topic for this because bOY are there things that need to be addressed!
So let me ask you this: What do you think of when you hear the words 'white lion?' Is it a majestic pure white lion? Do you think it's an albino lion?
Well, you're WRONG.
White lions are never pure white unless they're captive bred lions. White lions are actually extreeemely pale lions. They are still tan, just lighter.
And they're quite the opposite of majestic aswell.
And they are not albino lions. There have been no records of an actual albino lion. And there have been no records of a melanistic (black) lion either.
So let me just throw this out there:
White lions are the products of incest. Yes. And because of that, they come with a plethora of health issues.
In the wild, white lions are highly unlikely to survive up until adulthood because they are vunerable. Not only do they have weakened bones, they are also BRIGHT FRIKING WHITE. A zebra isn't going to see a normal lion because it's colored like the grass. A zebra is immediately going to see an object that is ten times lighter than the surrounding background creeping towards it and it is going to f l i p.
Captive white lions are even more unhealthy and less likely to survive than their wild cousins. Why? Because the extra pure white also requires *extra incest* and will cause even more health problems than before. Captive white lions cannot and never will be able to survive on their own. Ever. Plus they risk dying of exhaustion because of overheating. Because of the way that they are bred, they often cannot cool themselves and most, believe it or not, will never see their five year mark.
On top of that- Hey! did you know that almost all white lion cubs are killed? YES, KILLED! By who? Their BREEDERS. Why? Because more often than not, they suffer horrible physical deformities and because they do not fit the public image of a "healthy" lion, they are killed. You know Kenny the white tiger? The tiger often paraded around as having down syndrome (which, by the way, cats cannot get)? He's normal. He is what most white tiger /and lion/ cubs look like. And he is waayyy lucky to have survived that long with those issues.
LIGERS AND HYBRIDS
So on the topic of horrible stuff caused by human greed, we move onto a similar issue: Ligers.
Ligers are not the giant fantasy cats of your dreams. They are deadly and they are DYING.
Ligers are the cross between a male lion and a female tiger. (Not to be confused with the Tigon, which is a male tiger and a female lion.)
And if you've seen pictures of them, theyre HUGE. And that's why they are a problem. The problem is is that they are too huge. And it is killing them.
It is extremely rare that the mother of a liger will survive. And it is also highly unlikely that she will even give birth to it. Why? Because- as I said- ligers are too huge. If the mother tries to give birth to the liger, she WILL DIE because the baby is too big. And the baby won't survive without human interference either because it will get stuck in the /you know/ and suffocate. The only way to deliver a liger is through C-section. And even then, the mother is already doomed; she MAY have a 15% chance of survival /if she's lucky./
And even after birth, the liger has only a 10% chance it will see its fifth birthday. Why? Because as I've stated multiple times, the liger is too huge. As in its slowly dying huge.
You see, male lions have this gene that tells the baby to grow as big as it can as fast as it can so that it can be the strongest. The female lion has a gene that tells the baby to stop growing. What do you get when you take away the female lion? A baby that will /never/ stop growing.
Ligers will never stop growing, and that is bad. Extremely bad. It will get so big that it cannot support itself and its organs will began to crush themselves, leading to organ failure, septic shock, and in most cases- death.
However, there is one species of lion that has territories overlapping with tigers- asiatic lions. But there have been no reported cases of a naturally occurring liger. That isn't to say that one could never exist, just that one hasn't existed /yet./ Theoretically, a natural liger could exist. But it will still come with the same health issues as the man-made version.
That still goes to show that a liger is a hybrid that should never exist and only exists because of our greed and our idea that "bigger is better." And it's killing hundreds.
This all being said, you should now have a general idea on how to correctly roleplay a lion or a liger! If you feel anything is missing or incorrect, tell me!
