Cape lion
| Cape Lion | |
|---|---|
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| Only known photo of a live Cape Lion, ca. 1860 in Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Genus: | Panthera |
| Species: | P. leo |
| Subspecies: | †P. l. melanochaitus |
| Trinomial name | |
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Panthera leo melanochaitus Ch. H. Smith, 1858 |
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The Cape lion is possibly an extinct subspecies of lion, with the taxonomic name "Panthera leo melanochaitus," that was closely related to the Kalahari lion, or a former population of Transvaal lions (Panthera leo krugeri). Even if the phrase "Panthera leo melanochaita" were to refer to a genetic clade of lions that includes the 'black-maned' Cape lion, Panthera leo melanochaita would nevertheless be distinct from Panthera leo leo.
As with the Barbary lion, several people and institutions claim to have Cape lions. There is much confusion between Cape lions and other dark-coloured long-maned captive lions. Dark-maned lions in captivity today have been bred and cross-bred from lions captured in Africa long ago, with examples from all of these 'subspecies'. Mixed together, hybridized, most of today's captive lions have a 'soup' of alleles from many different lion subspecies.
Early authors justified 'distinct' subspecific status of the Cape lion because of the seemingly fixed external morphology of the lions. Males had a huge mane extending behind their shoulders and covering the belly, and the lions' ears also had distinctive black tips. However, nowadays it is known that various extrinsic factors, including the ambient temperature, influence the colour and size of a lion's mane. Results of research published in 2006 do not support the 'distinctness' of the Cape lion. It may be that the Cape lion was only the southernmost population of the extant Transvaal lion, or that it was closely related to Kalahari lions (possibly Panthera leo krugeri or Panthera leo bleyenberghi), a number of which had black manes (Rodrigues, 1997).
According to Hershkovitz (1966), genetic material between Eastern (Panthera leo azandica and Panthera leo massaica) and Southern African lions was quite similar, though a genetic and phenotypic analysis on captive Addis Ababa lions showed that they were distinct from wild lions. As for Central-West African lions, they appeared to be more closely related to North African and Asiatic lions than to other Sub-Saharan African lions. Therefore, if the subspecies of lions had to be reclassified according to close relationships, then the Senegal, Barbary and Asiatic subspecies would be reclassified as Panthera leo leo, and lions from Eastern and Southern Africa would be reclassified as Panthera leo melanochaita, but some taxonomic questions are not yet solved.
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Wikipedia