During our teenage years most of us understood that sex is a critically important aspect of human life. Then the stress of the workplace and the onset of family life made us want to climb up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs i.e. music, culture, philosophy, etc. Therefore it is good to be reminded by other (carnivorous) mammals that sex is a really important thing. The mammals in question are Jacob, a three-legged lion, and his brother Tibu. They live in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda (not in northern India or Gujarat).
Jacob & Tibu had figured out the problem without having to consult a Whatsapp group: “Male lions outnumber females by two to one at the national park where lionesses became all the more scarce after more than a dozen were poisoned by farmers trying to protect their livestock.
As a result, desperate times have called for desperate measures, said Alexander Braczkowski, a conservation biologist.
The odds were against the pair from the outset. Having lost a battle for territory, they were trapped in inhospitable surroundings with the nearest females on the other side of the channel.”
Then one night, Jacob & Tibu moved swiftly to solve the problem thus making their parents proud: “When they heard the roar of lionesses, they couldn’t resist. But it took them time to pluck up the courage and embark on their journey. They initially jumped out of the water immediately after getting in and were forced to turn back again after being chased by a hippo or a crocodile, according to signals the team picked up with an overhead drone.
Then, nearly an hour after their first foray into the channel, the big cats tried again.
“It was pretty dramatic,” Dr Braczkowski, who works with Griffith University in Australia and Northern Arizona University, told The New York Times. “It looks like two tiny little heat signatures crossing an ocean.”
Dr Braczkowski has little doubt it was the lure of the lionesses on the other side of the river which prompted Jacob and Tibu to undertake the perilous journey.
“These males and these swimming events are a symptom of this problem,” he said.
“The males are not finding females in the area where they had tenure. The only females they can get to may be across the channel.”
Lion expert Craig Packer, who was not involved in the study, agreed.
“If there’s nobody to mate with, what are you doing? You’re a male lion. You don’t have a very long lifespan, so you have to get on with it, especially if you’re wounded.
“If they can tell that there are females over there and no males, it would be, ‘Sign me up! Sign me up!’””
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