Ikoma Serengeti: The Making of a Lion King or Queen
By Eden Washington, 6th grade FNN reporter at Friendship Public Charter School Online, Photos from Google.
March 18, 2021. It seems that the fascination with animals and their babies never gets old. Even my parents MOO at cows when driving down winding country roads, and my sentiments are the same as I ride down these dusty roads in the Ikoma Serengeti, in the Mara region of Tanzania, just outside of the Serengeti National Park.
The Serengeti ecosystem is a geographic region in Africa spanning northern Tanzania. The name “Serengeti” is often said to be derived from the word “serengeti” in the Massai language, Maa, meaning “endless plains.” For some reason, I feel like I have been dropped into the fourth installment of Jumanji, minus running for my life from a charging rhinoceros. I'm here to get a glimpse of the Big Five as the natives call them. These are the five most prevalent animals spotted in the Ikoma Serengeti: the lion, leopard, rhino elephant and african buffalo. They're also named the Big Five because hunters considered them the most difficult and dangerous to hunt on foot. I have never seen these animals in their natural habitat, so I am not sure what I will see, but I’m here for whatever it is. There is no shortage of cats here and I am in favor of the ‘panthera leo’ ((leo lion) as I am one of them. I specifically want to see lion cubs in their habitat to learn how they survive in the wild. So let me grab my binoculars and camera, ...let’s go!
‘In the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight,’...shhh, I move quietly, so I don’t startle the lion and her cubs. A lioness can have a litter of up to six cubs, but two to three at a time is considered normal. Lion cubs gestate for about 110 days. The helpless cubs typically weigh 2 to 4 lbs. at birth and are born blind. The mother lion goes off away from the pride, usually to a hidden area with dense bush thickets or a cave to birth her cubs. The mother has a huge responsibility while she is nursing her young because she is still expected to hunt at night which means that she may have to leave her cubs. If she is fortunate, she may have a creche, which is a group of lionesses to watch over her young, as she hunts in the night. The creches keep the cubs safe from predators such as other lions, and other larger animals like elephants. Unlike leopard cubs who nurse from the same teat on the same mother every time, lion cubs will nurse at any vacant teat, even if it is not the teat of their mother. Young cubs typically begin to eat meat around the third month and they usually get the last pickins from a kill. Their hunting skills are achieved during the second year of life and they are considered fully grown between their third and fourth year.
As year old cubs, they are still quite playful and often oblivious to any danger lurking among them. Though they learn to hunt by watching their mother and other lionesses hunt, they do not get the full experience of game hunting until they are pushed out of the pride to fend for themselves. This unfortunately happens to the male lions starting at the age of two years so that they will not become a threat to the male leader of the pride. The young lionesses are typically allowed to stay with the pride she was born into. A pride is a family unit which may consist of 15 to as many as 30 lions. There can be up to three males, a dozen females and their young.
As with most other animals, these adorable predator felines have interesting personalities as well. They are all too happy to engage in rough and tumble play with their siblings to learn valuable hunting and survival skills as each lion is for himself when it comes to getting pickings of the kill. Once the game is gone, they are friendly towards each other again. They can be stubborn creatures as well when they want to do what momma lions do not want them to do, like get too close to a stream of water because they may be subject to being snatced by a crocodile. Nevertheless, the fierce lion mom stays in close proximity to retrieve her cubs when necessary before a predator can make her cub its prey.
You thought I was done didn’t you? I’ve gotta sit under this baobab tree and speak with my ancestors for a while. You know me, I did not come all the way to Tanzania to not do something I want to do, like stick my feet in the Indian Ocean. You can find me on the beach in Zanzibar. I’ll get my next coordinates from there.
Eden Washington is a 6th grade scholar at Friendship Public Charter School Online.