A Tale of Simba and Nala
The mating of lions
To see any animal mate must be quite a sight, this was our first mating and it was completely wauuu…
In the night before, a lot of lion activity was all around the lodge. Tracks of multiple single females, small groups and males were found everywhere. Throughout the night we heard a lot of calls from both male and female lions. In the morning, the guides & trackers were quite excited to find out what had happened that got them so worked up.
So how does it work: Nala is lying down, Simba approaches her from the back, Nala gets up and walks a bit, then Simba becomes impatient and he jumps on Nala’s back, Nala then lies down and Simba immediately finds his way in with his tiny hook like penis. Then we have some fast hip movements, during which Simba is slightly biting Nala’s neck because it hurts him. It however hurts her also and that is why she wants to bite Simba as well, so when Nala turns and lets her voice be heard mating is over.
This process in total lasted full 50 seconds, after that Nala lies down and relaxes and Simba walks to some close by bush to do some same-time-pi-pi-and-scraping-dirt-thing to mark his territory. After approximately 5 minutes everything starts all over again, and like that it can go for up to 5 days. For me it was so cool to find out that the king of the jungle has a super tiny penis which just shows us that it is so stupid to think that size matters.
It is surely an impressive site to watch these animals mate over and over again. The reason for this whole process is two fold: First off the male’s sperm is weak so the more often they mate, the higher the chances of generating off-spring. Studies have also shown that lions are animals with induced ovulation, which means the female ovulates because of the mating ritual. Most likely because of the pain induced by the small hooks on the male’s genitalia. Therefor, each mating induces ovulation which again increases the chances that sperm finds an egg to fertilize.
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