TIL: Female Lions Are Attracted to Black Manes | Today I Learned

[Music] M. If a male has a really good-looking mane, females go crazy over [Music]. Lions actually have to be in really good physical condition to produce that dark hair on the mane, and males that are not quite so healthy produce a blonder [Music] mane. So, the black mane is actually an indicator that this male is prime genetic [Music] material.

This really translates into something that's really important for the females because she'll get really good quality offspring by inheriting the vigor that's displayed by her mate. But it's also a staying power. He has higher levels of testosterone, the male hormone. He's more aggressive [Music]. It means he's going to be able to stick around successfully and protect her and her babies, and that means they end up having more surviving offspring.

So, the female lion is preferring a male who's going to be the better, more successful father. Watch this. There, Madam, is the amount of bread that you cause to disappear every week. Big corporations have invested billions of dollars into working out how to trigger that evolutionary impulse to take and take more.