Barbary Lion

The cultural significance of North African lions

Lions played a role in early Egyptian art and literature. Archaeologists discovered statues and statuettes of lions from Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period (3100 to 2686 BC) in Hierakonpolis, the religious and political center of Upper Egypt, and in the ancient Egyptian city of Koptos. The goddess Mehit from Egyptian mythology was depicted as a reclining lioness in the Early Dynastic Period and later as a lion-headed woman. Sekhmet was another lion-shaped goddess in ancient Egyptian mythology. Amulets and figures with lion heads were also found in tombs on the Aegean islands of Crete, Euboea, Rhodes, Paros, and Chios.

There is evidence that the ancient Egyptians kept lions in captivity. In 2001, archaeologists discovered the skeleton of a mummified lion in the rock tomb of Maia, the wet nurse of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun, in the necropolis of Saqqara. This find was the first complete lion skeleton discovered in Egypt. The archaeozoologist Cécile Callou examined the animal of unknown geographic origin in more detail and published her results in 2011 in the journal Anthropozoologica: The lion must have lived in poor conditions in captivity for many years. It likely suffered from malnutrition, as its teeth were broken and showed signs of chronic inflammation. Furthermore, fractures of some ribs and thoracic vertebrae indicated that the animal had suffered at least one fall.

Lions held a special place not only for the ancient Egyptians but also for the Romans, who captured thousands of these animals – usually from North Africa – for their animal hunts. David Day wrote in the 1981 Doomsday Book of Animals: “Both Julius Caesar and Pompey were known to have shown hundreds of these big cats at a time.” In Roman arenas, alongside gladiatorial combats, fights between exotic animals were major entertainment attractions. For example, the Barbary lion and the also-extinct Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) were pitted against each other in these fights. Animal hunts, which resulted in the deaths of many animals and contributed to the extinction of some species, continued until the 6th century.

Barbary lion – Fact sheet

Alternative name	North African lion, Berber lion, Atlas lion, Egyptian lion
Scientific name	Panthera leo leo, Panthera leo, Panthera leo nubicus, Panthera leo barbarica, Felis leo barbaricus, Felis leo nubicus, Felis leo leo, Felis leo
Original range	Algeria, Morocco, previously all of North Africa
Time of extinction	1960s
Causes of extinction	hunting, habitat loss, loss of prey animals

When and why did the Barbary lion go extinct?

Battles in Roman arenas cannot, of course, be seen as the sole cause of the disappearance of the Barbary lion. In historical times, the Barbary lion was found throughout North Africa, but by the early 18th century, it had vanished from the northeast of the continent and was only found in the northwest. Populations in western North Africa also dwindled. David Day outlines the reasons for this decline:

“Like the Atlas Bear’s, the Barbary lion’s territory was once all of forested North Africa, but human destruction of that habitat and the spreading of the desert, combined with continuous hunting, resulted in a 2000 year retreat; culminating in a confrontation with European guns, and extinction.”

The Doomsday Book of Animals, 1981, D. Day

The last refuge of the Barbary lion was identical to that of the Atlas bears: the rugged forests of the Middle and High Atlas Mountains. According to David Day, these were the wildest and least developed regions of North Africa well into the 20th century. In Great and Small Game of Africa (1899), British African explorer Harry Johnston writes about the disappearance of Barbary lions:

“What has brought about the extinction of this animal is less the persistent attacks of French or Arab sportsmen than the opening up of the forests and the settling down of the people since the French occupation. The herds are now so carefully tended that the lion has little or no chance of feeding on them, while the Barbary stag and the gazelles have in that region become very scarce.”

Great and Small Game of Africa, 1899, H. A. Bryden

With the French occupation of Algeria starting in 1830, it became a pastime for the colonial military to shoot herds of ungulates, which primarily led to the extinction of the Bubal hartebeest in the first half of the 20th century. For the Barbary lions, the hunting of Barbary stag (Cervus elaphus barbarus) and other ungulates meant a reduced food supply. It is known that Barbary lions also hunted wild boar and Bubal hartebeest in addition to Barbary stag.

Most sources, such as Igor Akimuschkin in Vom Aussterben bedroht? (1972), state that the last Barbary lion was killed in Algeria in 1893 or shot by a poacher in 1920 (or 1922) in the Moroccan part of the Atlas Mountains. However, a 2013 study by the University of Kent in England indicates that the Barbary lion may have survived much longer than previously thought. Evidence suggests that the North African lion was still present in the Moroccan part of the Atlas Mountains in 1942, and some individuals may have lived in Morocco and western Algeria until the 1940s. There are also reports that Barbary lions were still present in eastern Algeria in more recent times. These lions disappeared during the military conflict in Algeria between 1958 and 1962, when the last mountain forests near the coast, which served as military hideouts, were systematically destroyed by arson. The scientists of the study suspect that small populations of Barbary lions may have survived in remote regions until the 1960s.

A popular zoo and circus animal

In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, Barbary lions were frequently captured as cubs and brought to Europe, where they were kept as circus animals or in zoos, such as the London Zoo in the late 19th century. However, lions were kept in England even in medieval times: From 1235 to 1835, the menagerie at the Tower of London housed exotic wild animals, mainly big cats and bears.

In 2008, scientists studied two well-preserved lion skulls excavated from the Tower of London between 1936 and 1937. Using radiocarbon dating, they dated the skulls to the 13th or 14th century and the 15th century, making them the earliest confirmed lion remains in the British Isles since the extinction of the cave lion (Panthera spelaea) in the Pleistocene. Furthermore, DNA analysis and measurements of the skulls indicated that the lions from the Tower of London originally came from North Africa, confirming that they were Barbary lions.

The lions kept in the Tower of London were transferred to the newly built zoo in London in 1835 by order of Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, as the zoo offered better facilities for their care. Various contemporary reports criticized the conditions under which wild animals were kept in captivity. French zoologists Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Georges Cuvier noted in their 1824 Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes that the conditions for big cats in menageries were very poor. English naturalist Charles John Cornish wrote in his 1899 book Life at the Zoo that lions in the London Zoo in the mid-19th century survived an average of only two years in captivity.

The Barbary lion, the Cape lion, and the Caspian tiger are not the only big cats to have disappeared in historical times. The Bali tiger, the eastern cougar, and the Formosan clouded leopard are also considered extinct today.

Were Barbary lions larger than other lions – Fact or fiction?

Barbary lions are commonly believed to be the largest lions that existed in recent times. To test this thesis, Malaysian zoologist Nobuyuki Yamaguchi examines historical records concerning the size of these big cats in his 2002 study The North African Barbary Lion and the Atlas Lion Project. He is surprised at how few pieces of evidence support the idea that Barbary lions were “huge animals.”

Today, we know that male lions living in Africa can reach a body length of about 270 centimeters (including the tail) and an average weight of 185 kilograms, with some individuals weighing over 200 kilograms. In their Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier measured a six-year-old male Barbary lion raised in captivity and found it to be only about 224 centimeters long (including the tail), which is quite small for a male lion. Yamaguchi, however, notes that it is unclear whether Barbary lions could reach their full size in captivity.

In 1856, the French explorer and hunter Jules Gérard described the measurements of a wild male Barbary lion in The Adventures of Gerard, the Lion Killer, noting a body length of 230 centimeters, a tail length of 90 centimeters, and a weight of 270 to 300 kilograms. If these numbers are accurate, the Barbary lion would indeed have been larger than other lions. However, Yamaguchi questions their accuracy, as Gérard could only make rough estimates in the field. Additionally, Gérard, who had a reputation as a “fearless lion killer” in the mid-19th century and liked to report on his hunting expeditions, might have exaggerated, making him a less reliable source.

Since Yamaguchi finds no significant evidence in the literature from the time when Barbary lions were alive, he also measures Barbary lion skulls and compares their size with those of other lions. The largest skull he measured was 36 centimeters long, which is not particularly large, as skulls of today’s lions from the Sahara can be 38 to 40 centimeters long. Currently, fewer than ten skulls of adult Barbary lions are known from museums and collections. Yamaguchi points out that this is too few to make reliable statements about whether Barbary lions were actually larger than other lions, though the evidence suggests they were not.

A dense mane as a distinguishing feature

In their natural habitat, contemporary African and Asian lions typically do not have manes that extend past their shoulders and along their bellies, as was the case with Barbary lions. A pronounced, dense, and dark mane is still frequently associated with Barbary lions today. However, this feature should not be used as a morphological criterion to distinguish Barbary lions from other lions. The reason is that their thick mane was merely an adaptation to the colder, temperate climate of the mountains. Observations in zoos have shown that lions develop more pronounced manes when exposed to colder climates.

In a 2002 study, biologists Peyton M. West and Craig Packer scientifically demonstrated a strong positive correlation between mane size and cool temperatures. They also indicated that the size and color of the mane could be influenced by other factors such as nutrition and physiological stress.

According to Yamaguchi, the fact that North African lions were not necessarily depicted with particularly dense manes in Roman art could be due to the conditions under which the lions were kept in captivity during Roman times, which might have affected their mane growth. Therefore, a dense mane is not a reliable distinguishing feature between Barbary lions and other lions. Male lions kept in zoos in colder regions such as Europe, Russia, or North America, which have thick manes, do not necessarily carry Barbary lion blood.

Barbary lions: Lion subspecies or population?

In a 2020 interview with DownToEarth, British conservation scientist Simon Black noted that little is known about the genetics of Barbary lions due to the limited number of museum specimens in Europe and America. Morphological studies, however, suggest that Barbary lions had a more robust body, shorter limbs, some differences in hip structure, and features typically found only in Indian lions, such as an abdominal fold and specific skull structures. Black considers it possible that not only the dense mane but also some other morphological features of Barbary lions may be attributed to the colder climate.

The distinctive appearance of the Barbary lion led Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné to scientifically describe it as Felis leo in 1758. In the past, scientists described numerous lion subspecies, with the Barbary lion being designated as the nominate subspecies. Modern natural history classifications include Barbary lions, West African lions, Cape lions, and Asiatic lions. The lions north of the Sahara were the Barbary lions.

The 2017 Revised Felidae Taxonomy by the Cat Specialist Group of the IUCN reduced the number of lion subspecies originally identified by zoologist W. Chris Wozencraft from eleven to two. Based on recent genetic analyses, only two lion subspecies are currently recognized: Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo melanochaita.

The subspecies Panthera leo leo includes West African lions, Central African lions north of the rainforest belt, Indian lions, and the extinct lions of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans, which encompasses the Barbary lion. The subspecies Panthera leo melanochaita includes lions from East and Southern Africa, such as the extinct Cape lion. This classification means that the Barbary lion and the Cape lion are not distinct subspecies but populations of Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo melanochaita, respectively.

Nearly 90 percent of all lions belong to the southern subspecies P. l. melanochaita. In North Africa, the limited landscapes led to more scattered lion populations, according to Simon Black. This made them less resilient to human impacts, ultimately leading to their disappearance in the mid-20th century.

Barbary lions in today’s zoos

As Barbary lions became increasingly rare in the wild, zoos soon had no “true Barbary lions” left, only hybrids with lions from other populations. An exception was the zoo in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, where the lions were considered direct descendants of the Barbary lion populations of North Africa. In the 1970s, Morocco’s King Hassan II entrusted these big cats to the Rabat Zoo. These lions were initially received by Moroccan princes from the Berber people of North Africa as a token of loyalty.

The current lions at Rabat Zoo trace their lineage back to King Hassan II’s Barbary lions and are considered direct descendants. Their appearance at least matches historical descriptions of Barbary lions. In 1998, there were reportedly 52 lions in Rabat Zoo and various European zoos that descended from Hassan II’s lions. By 2020, the number had increased to around 90 lions. The Rabat Zoo and European zoos now focus on maintaining and breeding only members of the “royal Barbary lion group” to preserve the bloodlines and prevent them from being mixed with other zoo lions or southern lions. These Barbary lion descendants are even kept separate from Asian lions, despite both belonging to northern lion groups.

Many zoos in Europe advertise their efforts to breed pure Barbary lions, such as the Erlebnis-Zoo Hannover, Zoo Neuwied, Heidelberg Zoo (Germany), Walter Zoo in Switzerland, and Pilsen Zoo in the Czech Republic. These breeding programs aim primarily to preserve lions that directly descend from King Hassan II’s Barbary lions and whose physical characteristics match those of the North African big cats.