TIL: Wild Lions Live in India | Today I Learned

[Music] Most people think about lions in Africa, but very few people know that they actually exist in India too. It looks, uh, not very different from the African lion. It is, however, a bit smaller. It does have flappy skin on the stomach that looks different. Also, they live in smaller groups, uh, because they live in the forest. The prey they hunt is not as big as the buffalo in Africa; it's mostly deer or antelopes.

The Asiatic lion was the lion that people would use in the Coliseum. The Romans would use it to fight the gladiators. There used to be a lot of lions in Asia and Europe, actually; the numbers were [Music] decimated. The G Forest is the last pocket of safety for the lions. In many ways, the Asiatic lions are doing better than their counterparts in Africa. They're very well protected in the G Forest.

So, while the numbers of African lions are going down, the numbers of Asiatic lions are still growing. The only problem here is that the G Forest is getting too small for them. So right now, you actually have lions venturing into cities, small villages in Gujarat. It is really nice to think about that there is actually a lion population somewhere in the world where numbers are [Music] [Music] growing.