Promiscuous Lionesses Keep Cubs Safe

Source: Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

African lions seem to exemplify the conflict between genders. Acoalition of males will defend their right to exclusively breed with agroup of females against intruding males, who won’t think twice aboutkilling all the cubs in order to hasten the siring of their own with thefemales.

But in a subspecies of lion, infanticide and sexual coercion are much rarer – and much of it appears to be due to the savvy mating strategy of the females.

Read the whole story at my Animal Minds blog: Who's the Daddy? For Lion Cubs, It's Safer Not to Know.