LIONS 



I have never seen this done, but the process has been 

 well observed and attested; and certainly, of the 

 many hundreds of lion kills I have taken the pains 

 to inspect, the majority had had their necks broken. 

 Sometimes, but apparently more rarely, the lion 

 kills its prey by a bite in the back of the neck. I 

 have seen zebra killed in this fashion, but never any 

 of the buck. It may be possible that the lack of 

 horns makes it more difficult to break a zebra's 

 neck because of the corresponding lack of leverage 

 when its head hits the ground sidewise; the instances 

 I have noted may have been those in which the lion's 

 spring landed too far back to throw the victim prop- 

 erly; or perhaps they were merely examples of the 

 great variability in the habits of felis leo. 



Once the kill is made, the lion disembowels the 

 beast very neatly indeed, and drags the entrails a 

 few feet out of the way. He then eats what he 

 wants, and, curiously enough, seems often to be very 

 fond of the skin. In fact, lacking other evidence, it 

 is occasionally possible to identify a kill as being that 

 of a lion by noticing whether any considerable por- 

 tion of the hide has been devoured. After eating 

 he drinks. Then he is likely to do one of two things : 

 either he returns to cover near the carcass and lies 

 down, or he wanders slowly and with satisfaction 

 toward his happy home. In the latter case the 



