Three-Legged Lion and Brother Filmed Making Record-Breaking Swim in Search of Mate
Drone footage captured a pair of lion brothers making the longest swim ever recorded for their species — in the hopes of finding a female partner.
The lion brothers Tibu and Jacob were captured on drone cameras embarking on a death-defying 0.6 mile (one kilometer) swim across the predator-infested waters of the Kazinga Channel in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda at night.
The lion’s treacherous journey is the first visually documented long-distance swim for African lions.
A Lion With Three Legs
A team of scientists from Griffith University in Australia used high-definition heat detection cameras attached to drones to film Jacob and his younger brother swimming nearly a mile — which is equivalent to the aquatic leg of an Olympic triathlon event.
The siblings’ swim is even more remarkable given that 10-year-old lion Jacob only has three legs.
According to the researchers, Jacob has already survived poisoning by poachers and a goring from a buffalo. He was forced to have one of his hind legs amputated after being caught and severed in a trap during another attempt at poaching.
A Journey That Could Have Ended in Death
The scientists were attempting to get high-definition footage of the two tree-climbing lions hunting when the cats embarked on their astounding aquatic journey.
Prior to Jacob’s and Tibu’s record-breaking swim, the greatest distance previously documented for a swim by African lions stretched between only three feet and 65 feet and sometimes ended in death by crocodile.
In a paper published in Ecology and Evolution, the researchers explained that while lions are known to hunt both crocodiles and hippos on occasion. But lions become especially vulnerable when in water.
As a result, lions have a considerable risk of injury, or even death when making river crossings in Africa from encounters with these predators.
In fact, Jacob and Tibu made several earlier attempts to cross the Kazinga Channel. But the brothers had to abort these previous attempts after encountering large animals, most likely hippos or Nile crocodiles, which are also visible in the footage.
The Lions’ Bravery
According to New Scientist, the researchers think the brothers probably crossed the channel which is packed with predators such as crocodiles and hippos to reach lionesses they could hear calling from — a sign of increasing human-caused pressures forcing animals to take more risks.
Queen Elizabeth National Park’s lions are under immense pressure because 60,000 people also live within its limits, herding cattle, poaching wildlife, and sometimes growing crops. The lion’s population has been decimated by poaching and expanding human activity across the park.
“Male lions are spending a lot of their time searching for new females because, in the past five years, the population of lions in the park has fallen by nearly half, from 72 to 39,” researcher and the paper’s lead author Alexander Braczkowski at Griffith University in Australia tells New Scientist.
Lionesses have become scarce in the park. So Jacob and Tibu likely mounted the risky journey to get to the females on the other side of the channel.
“It’s kind of amazing when you look at individual capability and bravery in different species when it comes to passing on their genes,” Braczkowski adds.
“A human would never swim across that channel in the middle of the night, but a lion — even a three-legged one who has had almost everything taken from him — will just jump in.”
The full paper can be read here.
