General Information About the Barbary Lion

It was believed that the Barbary Lion was extinct in the early 1900s. However a very small handful of these rare and magnificent lions were discovered. Studies are now being done to see if enough true Barbary Lions can be located to begin a breeding program to save them.

Finding information about Barbary lions was difficult. I did however find a few web pages on the subject of Barbary Lions. This page contains excerpts from those web pages., The links to those pages are at the bottom of this page. Thank you to those who researched and compiled this information. Thank you for letting me use it here.

The Barbary (Atlas, Nubian) lion (Panthera leo leo) was the largest and was found throughout Northern Africa from Morocco to Egypt. The Barbary Lion had a more compact, heavier build than its cousins. It's face had a short broad muzzle with a wide face and large round amber eyes. The eyes had a very clear light iris, rather than brown like the African or Asian. The fur in the inside foreleg of the female was white. The mane that surrounded the face was blonde, while the rest of the mane gave the appearance of being black. The mane was actually a combination of tawny gray mixed with bright brown and blackish brown hairs. All Barbary Lions have this color mane, there are no variations. The tips of the ears were also black.

The only time a Barbary has blonde in its mane is when the animal is immature, or has lost some of its mane and is experiencing re-growth. African and Asian Lions can have many varieties of mane colors, ranging from blonde to red to brown to black. The mane of the Barbary is thick and lush, and extends down the chest through the front legs, down the back below the shoulder, and the length of the belly through to the groin. It gives the appearance of being 50% mane. The ground color of the coat is darker and more grayish than that of the more southern lion populations, and the hair in both sexes is longer.

The Barbary Lion occupied the woodlands of the mountainous system of the Great and Little Atlas. It was separated geographically from other lion populations almost entirely by deserts on the south, south-east, and east. It shared this range with two other predators now extinct as well, the Barbary leopard and the Atlas bear. Sadly, there are no reports of the Atlas bear or of the Barbary leopard existing even in captivity.

These lions were solitary like the other cat species, or occasionally lived in pairs. Females raised their young until maturity, approximately two years, and then separated from them.

Males and females only came together during the breeding season, which was thought to be January. Plains lions have no set breeding season, and can be found mating throughout the year.

Gestation is approximately 110 days, after which 1-6 cubs are born, with 3-4 being most common. The cubs are generally heavily spotted with very dark rosettes and weigh approximately 3.5 pounds at birth. They gain an average of 3.5 ounces per day, and their eyes open around the 6th day. They begin to walk at 13 days. Females start coming into estrous around two years old, but do not generally conceive until 3-4 years. Males show an interest in females between 24-30 months, but do not tend to produce cubs before the age of three, and more commonly until four. There is no reports of longevity in the wild, but in captivity they have lived up to 20 years, with 15 being average.

The main sources of natural prey for the predators of the Atlas Mountains were Barbary stag and gazelle. Another particular favorite, and somewhat easier target, were the Arab herds of cows and sheep, and even included a horse now and then.

There is currently an effort to try to reconstruct the sub-species using lions that show the characteristics of the Barbary lion.

It seems there has never been more of an importance on the physical characteristics of an animal than with the Barbary Lion. Only two sub species of lion possessed the lush dark belly fringe that extends throughout the groin with a golden halo around the royal face, becoming their most identifiable trait. The Barbary (a.k.a. Atlas, Nubian) lion was the largest and was found throughout Northern Africa from Morocco to Egypt. The smaller Cape Lion was found through southern Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to the province of Natal.  Today, devoted fans of this nominate race of lion feel it is worthy to preserve this lion based on its physical characteristics alone!  That in and of itself attests to just how unique, important and impressive this massive predator is!

As food was not abundant, these lions were solitary like the other cat species, or occasionally lived in pairs.  Females raised their young until maturity - approximately 2 years - and then separated from them.  In Africa and Asia, only the male offspring are thrown out of the family unit, and females remain a part of the pride for their lifetime.

A couple of years ago, Dr. Hym Ebedes of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in South Africa was checking out a zoo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia when he stumbled across eleven lions that fit the description of either the Cape or the Barbary Lions. They had the huge manes and the heavy bodies of either species. It turns out that the cats are descendants of a group kept by Emperor Haile Selassie at the royal palace in Addis before his regime was toppled by a 1974 coup. Selassie called his dynasty the "Lions of Ethiopia" and kept them around as symbols of power. With his overthrow, the zoo got the lions.

In addition, some animals were rescued from a sleazy traveling circus in Maputo, Mozambique. One of them was Akef, the lion you see here. Then some guy in Morocco casually mentioned that he thinks there are about 40 or so Barbary lions in zoos in his country.

So, right now, Akef, the Ethiopian lions, and several other lions scattered here and yonder around the globe are having DNA samples taken from them to be compared to museum specimens of Barbary and/or Cape lions. The lions that turn out to be the long-lost Cape or Barbary subspecies will, hopefully, be put into breeding programs for possible re-introduction into their home territories…or what's left of them anyway.