Barbary or Egyptian Lion

The Barbary or Egyptian Lion lion (Panthera leo leo) is currently extinct in the wild and only an unknown number of specimens are kept in captivity with varying degrees of purity or crossbreeding with respect to the original subspecies. Thus, zoos all over the world ensure its survival and make possible a future reintroduction in some of the territories that used to be its habitat of distribution.

The Barbary lion is the largest subspecies of lion in existence today, presenting some characteristics that make it more similar to a Bengal tiger or a jaguar than to other lions, as a consequence of its adaptability to hunt in wooded areas. Thus, it has a large muscular mass and a short snout, strong legs, with higher hind legs, a robust tail and large eyes adapted to see at night, with little light, and to be able to hunt at dusk. Like other lions, males are characterized by a long, thick and dark mane, although reddish in the area closest to the face, which contrasts with the sandy color of its body.

It was adapted to habitats with scarce prey, so it developed solitary habits or in small groups, instead of hunting in herds as African lions that live in open savannahs with abundant food, and its larger size would give it an advantage when hunting on its own. Although ancient descriptions of the Barbary lion vary widely, with specimens over three meters long, even larger than those preserved in museums, it is most likely that those living in cold, mountainous habitats would have a large body mass and a long mane, while those living in desert areas would have a smaller size, less body fat and a shorter mane.

The Barbary lion was distributed over a large area of North Africa some six thousand years ago, which at that time consisted of an extensive savannah area that, when it dried out, became the present-day Sahara desert. As a result of the natural process of desertification and the disappearance of large herbivores, the populations of this subspecies fragmented into three: one inhabiting the Atlas Mountains and the area to the north of them; another in the plains and rock formations of the Tassili Plateau, in the middle of the Sahara Desert; and a last one between the Nile Valley and the mountains of Ethiopia. Although the lion was a sacred animal in Egyptian culture, representing the power and strength of the goddess Sekhmet, it disappeared from the Nile delta due to the action of man before 3,000 BC as a result of the growth of populations and the alteration and reduction of their habitats.

Later, with the Roman domination of the area, the Barbary lion populations continued to decrease, although its great decline is due to the fragmentation of the territory, the decrease of prey and grazing, which led to a change in its hunting habits that caused it to be killed to protect domestic animals. Although between the 17th and 19th centuries its extinction was recorded in different areas of Africa, persecution during the colonial period of the 20th century led to its extinction in the wild. Fortunately, when its distribution was limited to very localized areas of Morocco, some Barbary lions were preserved in zoos, from whose descendants come the current individuals, with different degrees of crossbreeding or genetic purity, which serve as hope for a possible reintroduction of the subspecies in the wild in some of its original habitats.