SOME EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT AND HABIT ON 

 CAPTIVE LIONS. 



By N. HOLLISTER, 

 Superintendent, National Zoological Park, Washington. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The series of over 100 East African lions now in the collection 

 of the United States National Museum was recently spread out for 

 study. Marked diiferences between wild-killed specimens and those 

 which had died in the National Zoological Park in Washington were 

 at once apparent. These differences involved both the skins and 

 skulls, and from the fact that five of the park lions were of known 

 history and were from a locality abundantly represented by wild- 

 killed specimens, the uniform differences between the two lots, wild 

 and park-reared, seemed more significant than would otherwise have 

 been the case. 



The 11 Zoological Park lions preserved in the collection agree 

 among themselves in all essential details and differ uniformly from 

 wild-killed lions. In the following remarks, however, the notes pre- 

 sented, unless otherwise stated, refer to the restricted subspecies 

 Felis leo massaica,^ represented in the collection by 59 specimens, 

 54 wild-killed and 5 park-reared. The five park-reared animals 

 have definite and complete records. They were captured near 

 Nairobi, British East Africa, and comparisons of skins and skulls 

 are made with specimens of equal age, killed in the same vicinity. 

 All chance of error from the use of park animals of unknown origin, 

 which might be crosses of different subspecies bred in captivity 

 or specimens of wild forms not represented in the Museum collection, 

 is thus eliminated. 



» In 1910. when reporting on the mammals collected In British East Africa by John 

 Jay White (Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 56, No. 2, p. 11), I referred the Nairobi 

 lion to Fclis Ico xahakietiais Lonnberg, described from Kilimanjaro. After working over 

 the much more abundant material since received at the Museum I am unable to recognize 

 this race, and now refer those lions to the earlier-named Felis leo massaica Neumann, 

 described from Kibaya, German East Africa. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum. Vol. 63— 2196. 



77403— Proc. N. M vo) . .53—17 ^1 2 177 



