Why Don’t All Lions Climb Trees?

Mike Letterman

Mar 4, 2022, 12:59 PM
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You can visit Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda or Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania and you will see lions that climb trees and rest on branches high above the ground. When lions try to climb, they look silly.

Craig Packer oversaw the Serengeti Lion Project for 35 years. He said that they get up there and then they have to figure out how to get down.

leopards are better built for climbing than other big cats, according to the executive director of the big cats program of the Wildlife Conservancy in New York City.

The lions are built with a very stiff back and powerful forequarters.

A lion can dislocate a limb if it is climbing a tree.

Most lions don't need to climb trees. They can defend their meals from other predatory animals. According to one study, solitary leopards would lose more than one-third of their kills to hyenas if they were unable to hoist their prey up a tree.

If lions are not built to climb trees, why do they climb them? It has more to do with learned behaviors and local conditions than it does with natural abilities.

Scientists suspect lions climb trees for various reasons, like to escape the heat or avoid buffalo or elephant stampedes.

There are very few records of lions climbing trees in Zimbabwe.

lions were driven up trees and down warthog burrows by a plague of biting flies after a period of heavy rain in 1963. The culture of tree climbing among Lake Manyara's lions may have been the result of this learned habit.

According to Joshua Mabonga, the Uganda program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, lions may climb trees to escape the heat and survey the landscape for prey. In Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, lions live in smaller pride than in other lion habitats and share the park with large herds of buffaloes and elephants. The safest place for lions is in the trees.

Lion's climb trees to escape pests, whether they are as big as an elephant or as small as a stable fly.

The right kind of tree is needed for lions to be able to make such an escape. African sycamore fig trees and umbrella acacia thorn trees have horizontal branches that are not too far above the ground.

It makes it easy for lions to get up.

Lion climbers have taken to tree climbing with the zeal of converts because of the conditions that allow them to climb. Everyone is up trees in Queen Elizabeth National Park. It has become a habit for generations to go up in the trees. It gets entrenched as a culture because it is fun.