Barbary lion

Barbary lion, (subspecies Panthera leo leo), extinct lion population that once inhabited large areas of North Africa’s Maghreb region north of the Sahara from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco east to Egypt. Barbary lions were known for their size, and admiration for them dates back at least to the Roman Empire, whose officials used Barbary lions in their gladiatorial games. Although wild Barbary lions were largely extirpated by European hunters by the late 19th century, studies suggest that wild specimens may have survived into the 1960s. Several individuals purported to have been pure-blooded Barbary lions were kept by the Moroccan royal family until the 1970s, and the descendants of these lions can be found in several zoos today. Barbary lions, along with Asiatic lions and African lions from West Africa and Central Africa, are classified in the lion subspecies P. leo leo.

Natural history

Despite the close evolutionary relationship that they had with West African, Central African, and Asiatic lions, Barbary lions possessed a number of distinctive visible physical characteristics. Males were known for their long, dark manes that could extend to their chest and long, dark hair on their front legs and abdomen. Barbary lions were also large—among the largest lions known—weighing as much as 230 kg (500 pounds). Unsubstantiated reports from 19th- and early 20th-century hunters claim that some specimens measured as long as 3 meters (10 feet) and weighed more than 300 kg (660 pounds).

These lions are thought to have been nearly identical, ecologically and biologically, to other groups of lions in the species (see lion: Reproduction and life cycle). They also functioned as apex predators with a diet that relied on eating large herbivorous mammals, such as deer, gazelles, wild boar, wild sheep, and livestock in the region. Barbary lions did not form prides; they lived in pairs or small family groups. Barbary lions lived up to 12 years in the wild and up to 20 in captivity.

Conservation status

The Barbary lion has been considered extinct in the wild since the 1920s. Because of their attacks on livestock, wild Barbary lions were largely extirpated in North Africa by hunters during the late 19th century; however, there is substantial evidence that wild lions survived well into the 20th century. Although the last confirmed sightings (and shootings) of a Barbary lion in the wild occurred in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains in 1942 and Algeria in 1943, geneticists and population modelers, on the basis of statistical estimates, noted in 2013 that other wild individuals may have survived as late as the 1960s.

Several individuals thought to be relatives of wild Barbary lions are still extant in zoos around the world. These lions stem from a group of 21 captive lions thought to have descended from wild Barbary lions kept by the Moroccan royal family during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Moroccan Sultan Muḥammad V kept them on the palace grounds until he was deposed and exiled by the French in 1953. The lions were sent to zoos in Casablanca and Meknès, Morocco, and 18 of them were delivered back to the palace upon the sultan’s return two years later.

This population had grown to 39 adults and 49 cubs by 1973, and all were handed over to the Rabat Zoo before several were sent to circuses and zoos in Europe. The remaining Moroccan lions were transferred to zoos in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Cuba, and the United States by 1978; some 80 descendants of these original Moroccan lions remained in zoos by 2002. Several zoos—including the Belfast Zoo, in Northern Ireland, and the Neuwied Zoo, in Germany—advertise the descendants of Moroccan lions as true Barbary lions. However, genetic studies that have attempted to link the surviving descendants of the Moroccan lions and Barbary lion stock remain inconclusive, since researchers have yet to rule out the notion that the lions kept by the Moroccan royal family were the products of breeding with sub-Saharan African lions.