As night fell in Uganda’s second-largest national park in early February, Jacob, a three-legged African lion, made several attempts to cross a dangerous channel with his brother, Tibu.
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In search of lionesses, the brothers had strayed “into the established territory of several other male coalitions” and “were simply expelled.” of them,” Griffith University scientist Alexander Braczkowski told Gizmodo. In retreat, the two lions repeatedly entered the Kazinga channel in the dark. It returned three times, “due to what appear to be encounters with hippos or Nile crocodiles,” Braczkowski and his collaborators wrote in a Forthcoming article accepted in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution. “Jacob was really in pretty bad shape when he crossed,” he added. Braczkowski.
On their fourth attempt, the brothers successfully swam up to 1.5 kilometers, or 0.93 miles, to reach the other side, in what the researchers called the “first long-distance visual swimming event recorded for the species.” In other words, lions had made this crossing before, probably “due to sexual reasons” and the “strong” presence of humans on the only available land connection, the researchers said. However, this was the first time anyone had captured film of this guy swimming.
Jacob completed the crossing after “at least two fights” and despite losing his foot in a poacher’s trap, Braczkowski said.
Researchers filmed the trip just after 10 p.m. local time, using an H20T thermal camera and a DJI Matrice 300 drone, while maintaining a distance of 50-70 meters, or about 200 feet.
Braczkowski led the expedition in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park, with funding from Queensland, Australia’s Griffith University and Northern Arizona University. pretty dramatic,” Braczkowski told the New York Times. The lions look like “two little heat signatures crossing an ocean,” she said, commenting on images captured by a Cape Town videographer. Lucas Ochse.
Humans have documented African lions on shorter aquatic journeys, typically no more than 100 meters, or about 0.06 miles, according to the paper. Members of the vulnerable species are not known to be strong swimmers. Jaguars, on the other hand, are “well known for their ability to swim in wetlands such as the Pantanal and in floodplain forests in Brazil,” the researchers noted.
Braczkowski believes an unhealthy sex ratio originally inspired the channel crossings, due to poaching and farmers poisoning lions to protect their livestock. . The lead researcher estimated that around 60,000 people live in the national park, “mainly across 11 fishing villages that were demarcated in the 1960s.”
“Beyond Jacob and Tibu’s quests for sex and territory, the swim reflects how the planet’s “most endangered and iconic” wildlife faces difficult decisions under increasing human pressure,” the researchers wrote. “Swimming through rivers and bodies of water filled with high densities of predators is an example of this. ”They ended the article with a call for more research into the connection between long swimming periods and the functional habitats of big cats in human-dominated areas.
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