This is neither a story nor a successful musical, it is the life story of the last lions in the world, narrated by a naturalist who lived among the lions for 15 years without any protective barriers.
Jorge Alesanco’s story is not for minors, it’s the cycle of life. Kings eat the offspring of other males; the females always bow to the savage onslaught of the conquerors and in the end, as we announced in the title, the deposed lion king, alone, starving and roaring into the night.
Below is the story that Jorge Alesanco told QUO.es, the man invisible to the lions, the last kings of the savanna:
Masai Mara Reserve, on the Kenya-Tanzania border.
Here, nature is like it was 50,000 years ago. When I arrived, a herd of lionesses had settled on this side of the Mara River. But soon four adult females arrived with four offspring driven from another settlement. If there are too many females to support the pack in a healthy way, the older lionesses will ruthlessly chase the younger ones. Young women must seek empty territory or enter into a territorial struggle with other people. These females with their four cubs came here and chased the others out. I call those who left The River Herd…
«I’ve been living with The Princess Pack for seven years»
Birds are the lion’s natural prey. At an exceptional time in the savannah of maximum prey shortage, this mother lion was forced to specialize in hunting the migratory white stork.
I spent about two years following them with my car, a flashlight and a camera go to. Then something unexpected happened. One night I punctured a tire and had to get off. The lionesses were beside me. That day, for the first time, I knew they wouldn’t hurt me. Birds are the lion’s natural prey. At an exceptional time in the savannah of maximum prey shortage, this mother lion was forced to specialize in hunting the migratory white stork.
«I became invisible to the lions»
Their greatest show of trust was given to me the first day they fell asleep beside me. If this happens to a wild animal, it is shown that it is not afraid and will not attack you. It’s the ultimate sign that they fully trust you.
Your eyes are a prodigy to hunt at night
Lions have a privileged optical brain, they use their eyesight to hunt. Hearing and smelling are only for their interspecific relationships. The lion has such extraordinary eyes that they see with as much sun as possible during the day and with as little light as possible at night. I have observed that the lion is able, within a group of ungulates, or zebras, to choose the prey it wishes to hunt, with the sky overcast, without moonlight or stars. In the most absolute darkness, he is able to choose who to attack “
«The Princesses of Masai Mara are already 12 years old»
Hyenas are the main enemies.
One of the cubs that arrived was killed by a conquering lion. So that left three adults and three puppies. Now the elderly women are about 12 years old. But they still look young. Females live longer than males. If they are in a place like the Masai Mara, they can reach 18 years old in freedom. The lioness in the photo was the victim of terrible hyena stings and lost her prey in battle. Some hyenas are enough to steal a lion’s prey if she is alone.
Their warrior’s heart makes them leave the pack and seek their territory.
Two sub-adult lion brothers during their regular fight and chase games.
Few lions make kings, only two in ten do. In Masai Mara, packs have between two and five kings. The number depends on the amount of food in a territory. Here is the abundance. Dams are available year-round. Everyone thinks the male lion is lazy and lives off lionesses. But that’s not true, it’s the man who has the hardest life. Male lions when they are young must seek their own kingdom. They are not cast out, it is your warrior’s heart that makes him leave the pack. Sometimes they go with a brother to have adventures when they are young, where they are the hunters themselves. The lion is as invisible as the lioness and is stronger, faster and better hunting than the female. In their nomadic years, they sometimes meet another loner and form a coalition to become stronger and conquer a new realm, a territory of older kings. And they will have no mercy until they are subdued and banished.
“The conquest of a kingdom is the conquest of women”
This prevents inbreeding and thus children are killed when they conquer new territories. They subdue the old kings, banish them and kill their children. I’ve seen this happen countless times. And the lion suffers when that happens. I saw a lion beside a cub for days without killing it. Keeping that aside. It took two days and two nights for this. They have no choice but to kill those who might in the future take their reign from them.
“Women end up rejecting their puppies”
In the beginning, females protect the offspring that cannot escape. But there comes a time when submission to the new kings is so strong that they stop accepting that their children share their prey. They are no longer accepted by the command. To be able to go into heat again, she has to reject her own infant children. They end up dying because they don’t know how to hunt and have nowhere to go. I’ve seen puppies alone, staring at the stars over and over until they die.
“The zeal of lionesses is not regulated by the seasons”
They come into heat at least once a month. When that happens, they copulate up to 80 times a day. They don’t eat, they don’t hunt, they end up exhausted… Copulations are concatenated, everyone copulates with everyone at the same time. Until one day the lioness rejected copulation because she became pregnant. At the moment, four women from the Princesses’ flock are fertile. There’s an old woman who never gave birth and looked at me to protect other dogs, to feel useful. The other lionesses came to defend me from her.
“Women usually give birth alone”
There are two types of lionesses, those that go alone and do not join the herd, because they prefer to take their cubs alone, alone, and at four months they return to the herd. Others give birth and raise the young in the company of others. The puppies are born at the same time, in community and feed their own and those of others indistinctly.
“The leader is always the noblest, the one who balances the pack. As you descend the ladder, they are more unfair, less wise, more cowardly »
One of the kings of this band is one of the defeated of the last conquest. This lion when they expelled him found a coalition of three males with no territory, joined them and brought them back to this realm. They took the territory back from your hands and let you be here. He is the last in the hierarchy, the subject. There is a clear hierarchy among men. The leader is always the noblest, the one who balances the pack. As they descend the ladder, they are more unfair, less wise, more cowardly.
“These are the last lions in the world”
I call them the last lions in the world because they are in absolute extinction. There are 20,000 lions left at the moment. It’s a very low number. In the 1980s, there were 100,000. I saw one of my lions dead, devastated by the beating he had received, and I practically saw him die. That warrior must never die. He does it himself. The one who was once king of the pack dies, far from his family, hungry and roaring to the moon. Until the last moment it preserves the silhouette of a powerful animal”.
Jorge Alesanco’s story is contained in the nine-part documentary series, El Rey de la sabana, produced by Story Producciones in collaboration with TVE.