Wild Inside the National Zoo Lion Pride

Lions are truly the only social cats, so the pride structure is unique in the cat world. It's very rare to actually see a natural pride in a zoo, formed in a zoo, and it's different every day. We can never predict exactly how it's going to go with that many lions. Our lion pride consists of our adult male, Luke. He's our only adult male. The two adult females, Nava and Shira, they're sisters, and then their six offspring. The first thing that we usually hear, even before we open the front door, is the lions are starting to rouse. The cubs do try to chime in. You hear these pips and squeaks and they're just trying to already be part of the big pride. Everybody is anticipatory about something. Either going out, getting fed, they hear the refrigerator open, they know that food is being prepared, then they're ready for what's next. If you ever wanted to know what 9,000 grams of meat looks like. We put glitter in the lion's food because it actually shows up in their poop. Nava gets red glitter in her food and Shira gets purple glitter. If someone is having an off poop one day, it's a great way for us to determine which lion may not be feeling well. Now for the cubs. Little tiny meatballs for the cubs. When we're preparing meat for the lions, we usually set aside a certain amount of meat to use for training. When we are getting ready to do a training session, we need to get them all into their individual enclosures, and to do that it is kind of like herding cats. I'm gonna let these guys spread out a little bit down here and see if we get anybody get the meatballs ready. Okay. They're probably gonna shoot through. Okay. Eva, looks like. Yep, that's Eva. That would be Eva. Yeah, for sure. I'm so lucky I get to train Eva. We do have one tough little girl. Her name is Eva. She's like our big attitude girl. I also train Amale, so she's the only female that was in Shira's litter, and she's very quiet and very dainty in the way that she eats. Target. The target stick is used as a directional tool, and they learn to touch their noses to it. We can use it to move them to different areas of their indoor enclosure, and so we can see different parts of their body, make sure they are healthy, make sure there's no injuries. The training creates a bond between ourselves and that particular cat that we're working with that will take them throughout their entire lives. I started working with Luke when he was one year old, so I pretty much watched him grow up, and he's gone from kind of a funny, little, playful lion to this big lion who seems to know that he's kind of king of it all. And when we're watching him in the yard, we tend to see him kind of hanging out at the very top while the cubs romp around, and that's just kind of his spot. Naba's kind of the mothering of the two females, and sometimes it seems like Naba's even kind of shoving Shira away because she seems to want to have control of the whole pride. Naba and Shira have proven to be great mothers. They actually will groom each other's cubs and nurse each other's cubs, just as you would see from wild lionesses, and they're very closely bonded. Pride life is important in the wild because lions are under constant stress. Having a team of support really helps lions survive. The wild population of lions has declined almost 50 percent in the last 20 years. It's very special to have an entire lion pride in the zoo. Our lion pride on exhibit here mimics what you might see if you were to go to Africa and see a wild lion pride. They're here to help us understand more about lions and to serve as ambassadors for their wild counterparts.