First of all, to be clear, lions are solid cats. In the classification developed by the IUCN Cat Expert Group, lions belong to the carnivorous-cat-leopard genus and are not classified as canines; and there is no authority in the world to kick lions out of the feline family. Therefore, the claim that "lions have been removed from the feline family" and "lions are canines" is purely rumored. There are already articles in this regard to debunk rumors, and I will not repeat them in the front.
A picture synthesized by a netizen
But what interests me is where the rumor that lions are canines comes from. After checking the Internet for most of the day, I found some so-called arguments, among which the integrator (which may also be the source) is the following paragraph, and carefully lists ten bases.
Screenshots of web posts
The picture may not be clear, I have sorted out the ideas in the picture and listed them below, one by one to argue, everyone should have fun.
Mr. Hai Dongqing, a famous feline expert, has demonstrated that lions will eventually evolve into similar canids, and according to the latest reports, Mr. cjnethome, an internationally renowned feline and canine expert, has confirmed that lions have made significant progress as canids.
First of all, the so-called two animal experts here, Hai Dongqing and Cjnethome, can not find relevant information. These two names may be pen names or online names, and there is no way to confirm the identity of the so-called "famous animal expert".
Second, since we say "according to the latest reports", where did the reports appear?
1, appearance comparison: lions like dogs are not like cats, their coat color is single, in line with the characteristics of canines; and cats have different degrees of markings. Male lion mane is consistent with Tibetan mastiff mane, which is not characteristic of cats. Cartoons all paint the lion cubs like dogs rather than cats, and it is very obvious that the academic consensus is to make humans develop a lion from an early age to the view that lions are canines.
Lions are actually striped. The markings of young lions are more pronounced, but gradually fade as they grow older. Adult lions are generally pure color, but some adult lions still retain faint spots on their foreheads, limbs, and abdomen.
Lion cubs
Not all cats are striped. As shown below, the mountain lion (top left), the fox (bottom left), the Borneo golden cat (top right), and the slender-waisted cat (bottom right) are all like lions and are generally solid colors.
Solid color cats
Cats are not without manes. For example, tigers, lynxes, etc. have facial manes (cheek hairs), and juvenile cheetahs have a back mane, but they are not as developed as lions.
Second, the mane is not enough as a basis for classification. Many animals have manes, and two animals cannot be grouped together just because they have similar manes. As shown in the figure below, people can't always be classified as Marco.
As for the image of the little lion in the cartoon, I must complain here, the cartoon can be used as an argument? According to this, are the animals in the cartoons who wear clothes, walk upright, and speak human words, and are academics implying that those animals belong to the human family?
2, life habits: cats like to live alone, and lions and well-known canine jackals, wolves, dogs, etc. like to live in groups, these social animals are mostly females, and have a leader, it can be seen that lions and these canine social forms are very similar.
Typically, only one knows one but does not know the second, only the appearance does not know the essence. Although lions live in groups, the social structure of lions is very different from that of canines such as jackals, wolves, and dogs.
Canines take wolves, for example, which are family groups based on parents and their offspring. Wolves are clearly hierarchical, with alpha wolves at the top of wolf society, usually with a more fixed mate, and head wolves that prevent other wolves from mating. The leader of the wolf pack is not necessarily the male wolf, and the female wolf who is strong enough can also be the leader. Below the head wolf is the beta wolf, or second wolf, the most powerful wolf in the wolf pack, who takes the place of the head wolf when he dies, or takes his place when the head wolf is old and frail. Other members of the wolf pack also have their own corresponding status. If there are multiple female wolves in a wolf pack, these female wolves often fight for status, and the frequency of fighting is even much higher than that of male wolves.
The structure of the lion group is not as complex as the wolf pack, the lion group is a matrilineal group, based on the female lion, the female lions of a lion group are mostly sisters, mother-daughter relationships. In the lion herd, everyone is equal, eating together in tandem hunting, enjoying equal mating rights, and raising offspring together, more like a communist "production team". The male lion is the "door-to-door son-in-law", and he changes one every few years. The offspring in the lion group are "females and males are not retained", the female lions will stay in the lions they were born in, and the male lions will leave their hometowns when they reach adulthood.
This social form of lion is actually very common in felines, such as tigers. Zoologist Sunquist has found that tigers also have matrilineal social properties. Female tigers with kinship (e.g., mother-daughter, sister) tend to be neighbors, and the affinity index of the neighboring female tiger is similar to the affinity index of the female lions in the same lion group. Male tigers, on the other hand, migrate farther away; a male tiger's territory is covered with several female tigers. This is very similar to the structure of lion groups, so Songqvist pointed out that tigers are scattered lion groups, and there is no essential difference in the social structure of the two.
In the African savannah, where large prey is abundant and surrounded by strong enemies, social settlements will be more competitive, so it is the unique grassland environment that promotes lions to embark on the social path. In some areas where prey is relatively scarce, such as the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, lions living alone has become the norm – it can be seen that the solitary and social habitation of cats is not absolute.
In addition, "whether to live in groups" is not enough as a basis for classification. There are also solitary people in the canine family, such as foxes, can it be used as a reason to expel foxes from the canine family?
3, fighting skills: the fighting skills of felines are the head does not move the claws first, and the canines because it is blunt claws, so the use of the ground is to tear the ground, the lion's hind limbs are weak, so that the front paws can not be used freely, but also use the bite method, so lions and canines use similar fighting techniques.
Lions are a species that lives in open grasslands, and compared to cats that fly in jungles or mountains, lions do have a slightly inferior agility, climbing, and jumping, but are better at running — a result of evolution in open grassland environments.
But to say that lions have weak hind limbs and bad use of front paws is really too much to look down on people. Lions also use their paws frequently in fights like other cats, such as male lions who often stand up and use their front paws to pounce. Moreover, clawing and biting are not distinct, especially for big cats, the two attack methods are often combined.
Male lions fight
4, hunting methods: cats are accustomed to attacking the upper three ways of prey, especially above the neck; while lions and canines like to attack the underground three ways of prey, especially the buttocks and thighs. Lion hunting is also similar to canines, which like to rush up and rely on strength to throw down prey, while cats are more likely to hunt prey with their own skills.
In fact, lions are more accustomed to attacking "three ways". Based on observations of lions in Etosha National Park, the main way lions kill large ungulates is by biting their throats, which is 72%; there are also neck and nose bites. It is worth mentioning that biting the nose and mouth of the prey and suffocating it is a unique hunting method of lions, and only some lions use this skill.
The Lion's "Kiss of Death"
For some dangerous prey, such as cattle with sharp horns, for safety reasons, lions often attack from the back of their prey, which gives the illusion that lions like to attack the lower three ways. Although lions do sometimes lower their mouths three ways, this is an inefficient way, and more often than not, lions go to the throat and spine of their prey.
Jumping on the back of prey is also a common trick used by lions, which has obvious feline characteristics.
Canines are generally much smaller than lions, and they do not have the ability to strike deadly blows to large prey, so most of the time they use attrition tactics, through long periods of stalking and constant biting to make the prey fall to the ground. This is still very different from the lion.
Lions hunt giraffes
African wild dog hunting
In addition, the way of hunting depends largely on the size and characteristics of the prey. It makes little sense to use "which parts to bite when hunting" and "how to put down the prey" as the basis for classification.
5, eating habits: the menu of cats are fresh meat, plus a little flowers and grass, and the menu of lions and canines in addition to fresh meat, there are some rotten meat. Cats are very picky eaters and do not eat carrion.
Why do lions give the impression of scavenging? First, because stray lions, a large proportion of which are old, weak, sick and disabled or young male lions who have been driven out of the lion group, have poor hunting ability, so scavenging is relatively common. Second, lions are often entangled with other animals, especially spotted hyenas, which are scavengers in people's impressions, and lions grab food with them, of course, making people think that lions also eat scavengers. These two situations are often highlighted in documentaries, so they will be impressive.
In fact, felines do not have that kind of "spiritual purity" rejection of carrion. Big cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and mountain lions all have different degrees of scavenging behavior, and fresh meat is not enough, and the meat that is snatched or picked up can also be filled with hunger. So cats sometimes scavengers are completely understandable and not unique to lions. For example, some people have photographed leopards "stealing meat from crocodile mouths".
In addition, what animals eat depends largely on the environment in which they live, so it is too far-fetched to use food composition as a basis for classification. For example, the bear family, both almost pure carnivorous polar bears and almost vegan giant pandas, do you still have to kick the giant pandas out of the bear family or even kick out of the carnivorous order?
6, personal hygiene: dog eat is a 3-year-old child understands the truth, canines by biting the prey anus to cause the prey intestines to wear the stomach is one of the canine tricks, the reason why the dog eats is actually to treat it as an anus, and the lion also has the habit of biting the prey groin, very obviously there is on it. Lions also like to roll on the feces to attract flies, using flies to guide them to find carrion, while feline cleanliness is well known and will not attract flies.
Seeing this "basis" with obvious emotional overtones, I can almost guess that it is fabricated by keyboard orc fighters in order to discredit lions.
First of all, flies are not only keen on feces, but also often ingest water and protein through the secretions of animals' eyes, mouths, noses, etc., which is why they will accumulate on the heads and faces of large animals. In addition, in addition to our common flies, African stingers (blood-sucking flies) are aimed at sucking blood, which makes many animals headaches.
Secondly, "lions like to roll on the feces to attract flies" is out of thin air. Although flies can often be seen flying around the lion's head, this is not what the lion wants, and the lion is so bored with it that it will even climb up the tree to avoid these small things.
"Felines don't attract flies" is even more taken for granted, flies do not care whether you are cats or dogs, such as the cheetah below has also been harassed by flies.
7, friendly neighbor relationship: the lion and all the surrounding cat-type animals are incompatible, such as leopards, cheetahs, hyenas (cat-type suborder hyena family), and its relationship with the wild dogs of the canine suborder canine family is far less tense. It can be seen that even the lion knows that he belongs to that side.
Typical "stuffing a human brain into an animal's head." The degree of conflict between animals depends mainly on the actual interests between them, not on the distance of the taxonomic relationship.
It is also unfounded to say that "the relationship between lions and wild dogs is far less strained". People feel that the relationship between lions and African wild dogs is not so tense in their subjective impressions, mainly for two reasons: one is that the number of African wild dogs is scarce, and the other is that African wild dogs have a more obvious tendency to avoid lions, which makes African wild dogs less frequent head-on conflicts with lions.
But less conflict does not mean a good relationship. On the contrary, in the natural environment, the most important factor affecting the distribution and number of African wild dogs is the lion. According to scholars such as Woodroffe and Ginsberg, "A large number of wild dogs are killed by lions, resulting in about 12 percent of adult and 31 percent of juvenile deaths, and in some areas this proportion can reach 50 percent." This seriously affects the distribution of wild dogs, making them always avoid areas with large lion populations. The high density of lions directly causes the density of wild dogs to decrease. For example, in Kruger Park, there was a time when 3 lions killed 7 of the 14 young wild dogs in 10 seconds, and although 13 adult wild dogs were right next to them, they couldn't do anything about it. Efforts to reintroduce wild dogs to Etosha Park in Namibia also failed because of lion hunting. In order to avoid lions, wild dogs prefer to live in areas outside the reserve, but this in turn makes them directly in conflict with people." It can be seen that lions are not at all tolerant of African wild dogs.
8, roaring mode: lions and canines such as wolves roaring way is to tighten the lips, straighten the neck, from the nasal cavity and mouth at the same time to make a long-distance sound, the way of the cat barking is to open the mouth, try to show the fangs, the sound from the mouth out of the air.
Really lazy code words, throw a short video. Felines have a variety of vocal styles, and names like lions are not unique.
Re-watch (I will reissue the video because it cannot be uploaded)
9. Naming name: The scientific name of the lion
It is a lion, and the meaning implied by this word has long been ignored by people, and it has attracted great attention from the academic community. All cat names contain words such as tiger, leopard, cat, etc., such as tiger cat, ocelot, domestic cat, cheetah, snow leopard, etc., while lion and feline names are unrelated (the cougar is a misunderstanding, its scientific name is the American golden cat, which obviously has nothing to do with the lion), while the lion name is indissoluble with the canine family, such as poodle, lion mastiff, etc.
First, names are only artificially prescribed concepts, and the literal relationship of names is not enough to serve as the basis for classification. For example, if you see the name "carp", it seems to be a fish, and it has nothing to do with mammals, right? But this guy is a real mammal — a pangolin. Is it possible to expel pangolins from the mammalian order because of the word "carp"?
Second, feline names are with words such as tiger, leopard, cat, etc., which is actually just a naming habit. Although the Chinese language is broad and profound, but also have to admit that in the naming of modern animals, Chinese is a bit "word poor", just take the cat family as an example, Chinese scholars often call the small size xx cat when naming, the medium size is called xx leopard, and the large body is often called xx tiger. For example, a large cat fossil has been unearthed in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, China, and scholars have named this animal Yang's tiger, but this is actually a lion.
Restoration of Yang's tiger
Incidentally, "the name of the mountain lion science is the American Golden Cat" is a false statement. I wrote an article before specifically saying that this cougar is the "Golden Cat of america"? Miss by a mile
10, genetic verification: it has been confirmed that 99% of the possibility of lions is canine, only the last step is genetic verification. Since DNA analysis is extremely complex...
Forget it, I'm too lazy to code these nonsense things.
Now that we're talking about DNA, it's worth talking about the guy in the picture.
Lion Tiger Beast
Lions and tigers hybridize to produce lions and tigers. This existence is enough to prove that lions are cats.
If lions are canines, why can two different families of animals cross and produce offspring?
If lions are canines, why didn't they make a lion wolf beast or a lion dog beast?
Manually split the line and take a break
In addition to the ten "bases" above, there are other views, as shown in the following figure, that lions are as long-faced as canines and are not good at climbing trees.
Netizens' speeches
The lion's face is long
Compared to the round-headed kitten, the lion does look long.-faced. But look at the face is what skill, let's look at the skull.
The skull models in the image below are lion (top left), tiger (top right), leopard (bottom left), and jaguar (bottom right).
Below is a group of cat skulls. The two largest: the lion above and the tiger below. The column on the left is, from top to bottom: cheetah, cougar, snow leopard, jaguar, leopard.
The skull models in the image below are the gray wolf (left) and jackal (right).
Without talking about data, the picture can be seen very intuitively. Although lions look long, the length-to-width ratio of the skull belongs to the normal category in the feline family, far less than the long face of the canine family. There are also significant differences in the skull structure of felines and canines.
Lions are not good at climbing trees
As mentioned earlier, lions do appear slightly inferior in terms of agility, climbing, and jumping, but they are better at running, which is the result of evolution in open terrain environments.
There are also cheetahs, which have long calves, tight tibia and fibula connections, and a much smaller range of motion than other cats, which increases stability when running, but reduces the ability to climb, and is also not good at climbing trees.
Most cats are good at climbing, but this does not mean that cats must be masters of tree climbing, and the direction of evolution in different environments will naturally vary.
Let's take another dividing line
Some netizens also proposed that in the 1979 edition of "Ci Hai", lions were classified as canines.
Due to the limitations of the conditions, this statement is difficult for me to verify. I hope that interested and qualified friends can check it out