Lions

Everyone likes lions... big powerful creatures that fight off evil Hyenas... well at least sometimes anyway.

I recently finished writing a report on social living in lions (which I might post, depending on my mark ;) ) and was interested to find out that they are truely the ONLY cats that live in social groups, and it's actually only the females that live in the groups, the males just sorta hang around hopefully ;). And these ladies are tough! Many of you have probably heard that male lions new to a pride will come in and kill all the babies. What you might not know is that the females will put up a fight! If their cubs are old enough, they often leave, but when the cubs are too little to move far, these frightening ladies have been known to fight until they're mortally wounded!

My paper discusses the many different factors that combine to make pride-living a good idea for the lionesses, but this was one benefit that I found really interesting. (Multiple females have a better chance of running off males than a single lady does).

John Storr has provided Wikipedia Commons with a lovely picture of a lioness and her cubs.