Unlike Humans, Lions Don’t Commit Incest.
One of the most outstanding traits of the Lions which stands them widely apart from most animals including man is the near impossibility of committing incest.
Although the issue of incest within the human population has cultural undertones where what is acceptable in some places are abhorred in others.
Interestingly over the years, experts have noticed a tectonic shift in the sexual habits of some animals, but the worst hit are those that live in some unique environments that makes it harder to meet their types from other groups who resort to inbreeding while others develop asexual reproductive tendencies.
But generally, few animals have shown unwavering discipline that abhors any form of mating with close relatives not to talk of siblings. The lions comes first. Hyenas come second, Rats come third.
Female hyenas will only breed with males that have been recently born into their group or who have just recently joined it. And male hyenas will only move to new groups of females to breed. Their social setup helps to avoid incest.
Lemurs avoid incest by using each individual’s unique scent to detect who is the most closely related to them and who’s the farthest sort of relation. The females will smell the males and decide whether to accept or not.
But lions have a strong system that ensures stories that touch hardly ever happens. First, as soon as male lion cubs mature sexually, they’re kicked out in what appears to be the most brutal expression of tough love by their fathers.
So the males that were kicked out usually stay together and form bachelor prides like the elephants. One interesting aspect of this coalition is that they usually engage a loner old male who probably lost his pride in a battle to mentor them on survival skills.
This experienced older male guides them and also ensure they do not get into trouble or trespass into another lion’s territory. Helping them know what battle they can take on and who to avoid, like the hippos, crocodiles, poisonous snakes and large hyena groups.
Sometimes, male lions will accidentally mate with female relatives. Perhaps they take over a nearby pride once they have been ousted and the lionesses there are actually their cousins and aunts from their father’s side – this is a possibility.
And because male lions roam for kilometres away from their familie seeking new territory, it becomes quite unlikely that they’ll ever come across their sisters, cousins and even mothers.
There has been very few instances where a male lion somehow returned to his father’s pride maybe after another lion overthrew his father, and he overthrew that lion thus winning the right to breed with his close female relatives because the natural instinct of lions is to breed.
On the possibility of lions mating with their daughters, it is also rare. The lion pride is matrilineal, the females are all sisters, first cousins, or nieces led by a matriarch. That’s why they time their births so that they collectively look after the curbs and in some occasions, one can breastfeed curbs of her sisters.
In the wild, a male lion lives up to 8 to 10 years, while a female can live up to 16 years. The lives of the male lions are short, and full of battles, that’s why they don’t live long.
Female lionesses take up to 5 years to fully mature and become sexually active, and most males sire their first cubs around 6 years which is their prime in this time, so by the time a young female would be mature for mating, her father would have been overthrown by nomadic males thus the possibility of inbreeding is zero.
It is ethical among major Zoos globally to ensure that this natural phenomenon is respected, that why Zoos move lions from their relatives to ensure captivity would not push them to commit what is unlion about them.
