Thousands of lions were slaughtered under Caesar.īarbary Lions were precious gifts sent from one royal family to another. Their frightening beauty made the Barbary lions popular among the Romans during gladiator games, which were held from 264 BC to 404 AD. They inhabited Barbary and the Cape and are believed to be extinct.” Pocock said in 1936, “Lions which earned that distinction (King of the Beasts) deserved it on account of their magnificent appearance due to a huge black and tawny mane covering the neck and shoulders, long enough to almost sweep to the ground, and passing through the belly almost as deep black fringe. If the Barbary lions were more recently taken into captivity, they would be closer descendants to royal lions than previously expected.īritish mammalogist R.I. Knowledge of the above will help people conserve remnant lions in West and Central Africa. How did these lions survive in degraded North African ecosystems? This will affect many African lions that may live in fragmented habitats and remnant populations, as they need greater help to survive in the wild.Ī more recent extinction date for Barbary lions raises several questions:
Scientists won’t conserve the rare ones that still exist in the wild, believing they are extinct. Scientists will stop looking for the species. The local community where these animals live will stop cooperating with conservationists. If an animal is wrongly considered extinct, all conservation efforts may stop. It’s impossible, Black said, for anyone to say they saw the last Barbary in the wild die.īlack says one shouldn’t hastily pin a date of extinction because: Simon Black, University of Kent, U.K., said the Barbary could have prevailed in the wilds of Morocco and Algeria until 1965, based on published post-extinction Barbary sightings, and personal interviews with old people from remote communities.īlack also factored in the Barbary’s ability to live in the wilderness for decades, unseen by people. The forest, their habitat, was a military hideaway, and war explosives decimated the area.ĭr. More recently, Barbarys prevailed in eastern Algeria but disappeared during the French – Algerian war (1958-1962).
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In 1956, people riding a bus saw a Barbary outside their windows near Sétif, Algeria. Some Barberys were sighted in Morocco and western Algeria in the 1940s. Other scientists say the Barbary (Panthera leo leo) became extinct in the 1920s.Īnecdotal “evidence” tells of a hunter who killed a Barbary near Marrakech in 1942. But three years later, in 1925, Marcelin Flandrin photographed a lion from the window of a plane from Casablanca en route to Dakar. Historians say Barbarys were extinct in Morocco in 1922. Some Barbary lions exist in captivity, but scientists can’t prove definitively that they’re purebloods. Scientific and conservationist communities can’t agree on when they became extinct in the wild. Before then, they roamed through Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the Maghreb, Northern African deserts, and mountains down to the Mediterranean Sea. This is because no DNA strain of a Barbary lion in the wild exists for comparison.īarbarys in the wild were destroyed in the last 200,000 years. Some 80-100 Barbarys live in zoos in Europe and Morocco, but there’s no way to definitively prove that they are 100% purebloods. Yet ironically, today they are extinct in the wild.
Barbary lions date back to the Pleistocene era 2.6 million years ago.
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