CBS Spotlight: The Truth About Lions

Craig Packer, a CBS professor and leading expert on lions, is featured in the January issue of Smithsonian magazine in an article called “The Truth About Lions."

One of Packer’s more sensational experiments took aim at a long-standing mystery. A male lion is the only cat with a mane, and some scientists believed its function was to protect an animal’s neck during fights. But because lions are the only social felines, Packer thought manes were more likely a message or a status symbol. He asked a Dutch toy company to craft four plush, lifesize lions with light and dark manes of different lengths. He named them Lothario, Fabio, Romeo and Julio (as in Juilo Iglesias—this was the late 1990s!).

Professor Packer attracted lions to the dolls using calls of scavenging hyenas. When they encountered the dummies, female lions almost invariably attempted to seduce the dark-maned ones, while males avoided them, preferring to attack the blonds, particularly those with shorter manes.

Packer has been running the Serengeti Lion Project for 31 or its 43 years. It is the most extensive carnivore study ever conducted. You can learn more about Professor Packer and his fascinating work in the Smithsonian article.