Template:Vital article

	Lion is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 24, 2008.
Article milestones Date Process Result September 30, 2006 Good article nominee Not listed August 12, 2007 Peer review Reviewed September 24, 2007 Featured article candidate Promoted April 14, 2011 Featured article review Kept Current status: Featured article

This article is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

Cats FA‑class Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cats. This project provides a central approach to Cat-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.CatsWikipedia:WikiProject CatsTemplate:WikiProject CatsCats articles FA This article has been rated as FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Mammals FA‑class High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mammals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mammal-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MammalsWikipedia:WikiProject MammalsTemplate:WikiProject Mammalsmammal articles FA This article has been rated as FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Africa FA‑class High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject AfricaTemplate:WikiProject AfricaAfrica articles FA This article has been rated as FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. India FA‑class Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.IndiaWikipedia:WikiProject IndiaTemplate:WikiProject IndiaIndia articles FA This article has been rated as FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Template:WP1.0

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present.

In the lead it states that "In the Pleistocene, the lion ranged throughout Eurasia, Africa and North America, but today it has been reduced to fragmented populations in Sub-Saharan Africa and one critically endangered population in western India." This is misleading, while Eurasian cave hyena are deeply nested within living african spotted hyenas, the Eurasian and American lions belong to an entirely separate lineage that split from living lions around 1.9 million years ago (i.e. species level split), and was present in Eurasia by 600,000 years ago [1]. The expansion of living lions out of Africa also happened relatively recently, around 21,000 years ago during the terminal Pleistocene [2] I'm not sure how this could elegantly worked into the lead though. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:42, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested alt, recognizing that this is the lead and not the article body: "Members of the lion lineage were broadly distributed throughout Eurasia, Africa, and North America in the Pleistocene. The range of living lion extended from Africa into India and the Middle East; today, it has been reduced to [...]" Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 07:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Update: New study: "The evolutionary history of extinct and living lions" in PNAS published yesterday, with nuclear genomic data of cave lions, suggests that the divergence took place 500,000 years ago, with no subsequent admixture. The terminology in the paper is confusing though as it inconsistently refers to the cave lion as a subspecies (Panthera leo spelaea) While referring to its Middle Pleistocene ancestor as Panthera fossilis. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:58, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BhagyaMani Can I ask how it is that you have been unable to find "Northern lions" and "Southern lions" in this document by Manuel et al., even with the function of "CTRL F", while double-reverting my edits in this article, in Panthera leo melanochaita ([3]), and in Panthera leo leo ([4]), while under the false impression that the phrases "Northern lion" and "Southern lion" were used "ONLY in combination with the word LINEAGE, or that "They used 'southern / northern LINEAGE' but NOT 'southern / northern lion'"?

• "Northern lion" and "Northern lions" (which is not paired with the word 'lineage') each occur 2 times in the section "Results and Discussion"
• "Northern lion" and "Northern lions" each occur once in the subsection "Population History of Modern Lions" (in which "Northern lion" is paired with "lineages", but only in this case)
• "Northern lions" occurs once in the subsection "Inbreeding in Lions",
• "Northern lion clade" occurs once in the subsection "Implications for Conservation"
• "Southern lions" (which is not paired with the word 'lineage') occurs once in the subsection "Inbreeding in Lions" Leo1pard (talk) 11:32, 19 May 2020 (UTC); edited 11:33, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BhagyaMani I see that you have decided to focus on black-footed cats or cats in ancient Egypt instead. What's interesting about your double-reversions in this article, Panthera leo melanochaita and Panthera leo leo, all of which were done using WP:Twinkle, is that:

• At first, after I told you about using "CTRL F" to search for "northern lion" and "southern lion" in the document by Manuel et al., you said "They used 'southern / northern LINEAGE' but NOT 'southern / northern lion' in the article for P. l. melanochaita, which makes it appear that you put in "northern" or "southern" in the search box, without putting in "lion", and thus you saw "northern lineage" or "southern lineage", but not "northern lion" or "southern lion", but then
• When editing P. l. leo and this article, you said "They did NOT, but ONLY in combination with LINEAGE", which implies that you did not pay attention to the first instance of the phrase "northern lion", because it occurs as "northern lions", not as "northern lion lineage", and likewise, that you didn't pay attention to the instance of "southern lion" appearing as "southern lions", not as "southern lion lineage"!

Why did you make such contradictory statements, or have such a change of attitude about whether or not the phrases "northern lion" and "southern lion" existed in that document, in a matter of less than 6 minutes, as if you were in a haste to revert someone else's edits, like I see you were elsewhere, all using WP:Twinkle, especially after Kmzayeem talked to you about your habit of repeatedly reverting other people's edits? Leo1pard (talk) 05:59, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you telling me that I have been working on black-footed cat? I also know that I did !! And this had priority over answering your questions, as I had nominated this page for GA. It just passed -- , BhagyaMani (talk) 16:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Re your questions: I did search Manuel et al. (2020) for the keywords 'northern' and 'southern', but found them in combination with 'lineage', 'lion clade', 'group', but NOT implying a subspecific name that YOU read into this. I still don't think that using common names for these 2 subspecies is important. This article provides a host of info that is far more relevant to add to the respective lion pages than (assumed) names. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So you didn't see "northern lions" or "southern lions", just bits "in combination with 'lineage', 'lion clade', 'group', but NOT implying a subspecific name"? Don't be too sure, because just as Ji H. Mazák referred to P. t. tigris and P. t. sondaica respectively as "Mainland Asia tiger" and "Sunda Island tiger" in 2008 (albeit before the Cat Classification Taskforce of the Cat Specialist Group officially recognised them as subspecies in 2017, barring a subsequent study by CSG members Stephen O’Brien, Shu-Jin Luo and Carlos Driscoll in 2018), Marc de Manuel et al. referred to P. l. leo and P. l. melanochaita and "northern" and "southern lions" respectively, and like I told Tijkil, the issue of subspecies of lions is linked with those of tigers, because the main CSG recognised only 2 subspecies of lions in 2017, as with for tigers, but then, just as some CSG members (O’Brien, Luo and Driscoll) rebelled against the classification of 2 subspecies for tigers, by insisting on there being 6 monophyletic clades of tigers, or 6 living subspecies of tigers, in 2018, we now have a study which suggests that the taxonomic position of Central African lions may need to be revised, and this study was done by people, including CSG members O’Brien and Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, so watch out for what's going on within the CSG! Leo1pard (talk) 10:09, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BhagyaMani, I don't know why you're insisting that the earliest lions did not originate from Africa, even though your source (Werdelin) clearly states that they did. It did not say that the lion fossils found in Tanzania were merely modern lions. You have also cited Tseng (2014) for the claim that lions originated in Asia but what it actually states is "This is then followed by later Miocene dispersal of the lion–leopard–jaguar lineage and then Pliocene dispersal of the fossil ‘lions’. According to the DEC models, the last two dispersals probably occurred from Africa-Palearctic or Holarctic ancestral geographical ranges." Its stating that fossil lions could have originated anywhere in Africa or the Holoarctic. I personally think this information is unhelpful to readers and we should merely state that the earliest known lion fossils are found in Africa. LittleJerry (talk) 12:50, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are several issues here. Firstly, the earliest fossil lions are 2 million years ago in Africa. This might not be the earliest lion. Secondly, the genetic evidence on lineages (Johnson et al, 2006, Li et al, 2017) suggests a possible earlier Asian origin, but one without fossil evidence. A third issue is that the modern lions can be traced to a more recent African ancestor (~250 kya?). This is just off the top of my head so I'd need to check the details. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:33, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Re 'secondly': this is what I understood too, given that all authors agree about Panthera having radiated from Central Asia, with the leo lineage having migrated south / southwest, and the 2 cave lion lineages towards north, northwest and northeast; and that the Olduvai fossils are attributed to leo. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 14:28, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

LittleJerry On one hand, the main purpose of the mane is considered to be playing a role in sexual attraction towards females. On the other hand, the mane's length is considered to signal fighting success in male–male relationships, with it acting as protection for the neck and throat in territorial fights with rivals, and I've seen it myself, not just in fights between male lions, but also between lions and tigers in captivity. Tigers are supposed to have longer canines and stronger bite-forces than lions, yet I've seen plenty of cases where tigers failed to kill lions with their regular method of killing, that is to bite the throat or neck. If the manes did not offer any protection for the lions' throats or necks, then those lions should have been doomed when the tigers aimed for their throats or necks! Leo1pard (talk) 12:42, 7 August 2020 (UTC); edited 12:43, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The mane being neck protection is no longer valid. [5] LittleJerry (talk) 12:39, 8 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is, because the mane has been seen to be a form of protection, contrary to what this reference says, and the case of one reference contradicting another means WP:Conflicting sources, so we have to take a WP:Neutral POV. But as it is, you missed something in the given source:

Even though today manes don't seem to offer protection, West says a protective role could have been the reason the trait evolved in the first place. In the early evolution of the trait, males may have gone straight for the neck, making individuals with manes harder to attack and thus more favored by natural selection. As evolution continued and more and more males developed manes, attacking the neck area would no longer have been an effective fighting strategy, causing lions to try for the back side instead.

Leo1pard (talk) 17:52, 12 August 2020 (UTC); edited 18:00, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

She said "could have". We should mention the function that has the most evidence. LittleJerry (talk) 01:32, 13 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, just a minor edit suggestion for the Melbourne Zoo lion photo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion#/media/File:Lion_-_melbourne_zoo.jpg.

The description is emotive, saying that the lion is enjoying the moment. No other photo uses this emotive language. We also have no idea if the emotion is accurate, maybe the lion is just tired and yawning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaizoku-D (talk • contribs) 07:54, 8 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This line seems grammatically weird:

> Lions also enter waterways, evidenced by the occasional lion claw found in crocodile stomachs.[138]

If it's saying Crocodiles sometimes kill and eat lions, something like:

> Crocodiles may also kill Lions who enter waterways, evidenced by the occasional lion claw found in crocodile stomachs.[138] 70.186.123.3 (talk) 07:24, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Done