It looks like a typical male lion, but he’s a she.
Though uncommon, maned lionesses have been regularly sighted in the Mombo area of Botswana‘s Okavango Delta (including the individual pictured here), where the lion population may carry a genetic disposition toward the phenomenon, according to Luke Hunter, president of the big-cat conservation group Panthera.
Scientists don’t know for sure, but theorize that if a lion mother had abnormally high androgens during pregnancy, her female offspring might end up “masculinized”—a situation that occurs occasionally in people but which is rarely observed in wild animals. They doubt if such females are fertile.
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