The Barbary Lion was the lion of North Africa, from Morocco to Tunisia. It is extinct in the wild, and the last wild lions were killed in the 20th century.[1] It is not a separate subspecies in the 2017 checklist, which puts it in Panthera leo leo.[2]
Range
The Barbary Lion lived in North Africa from Morocco to Tunisia.[1]
Classification evidence
DNA from museum specimens shows that Barbary lions belong to the northern lineage of lions, with the Asiatic Lion.[3] A review of their genetics calls them the lions of Roman and medieval Europe.[1]
History
Lions in North Africa lost habitat as the Sahara dried about 6,000 years ago.[4] In Roman times, Barbary lions were shipped from Carthage across the empire for use in the arena.[5] Commentators once placed their end between 1920 and 1930. A review of historical sightings found that the last in Morocco’s High Atlas was an animal shot in 1942, and a statistical estimate puts the last wild lions in Algeria at about 1958, with an upper bound of 1962.[6]
Status
Captive lions
Lions kept in Morocco’s royal collection, the “royal lions”, may descend from wild Barbary lions. A 2013 review raised the possibility that these captive lions are closer to wild Barbary lions than was thought. How pure their descent is has been debated.[6][1]
Sources
- Black 2016, International Journal of Evolutionary Biology (Barbary lion)
- Kitchener et al. 2017, A revised taxonomy of the Felidae, IUCN Cat Specialist Group
- Barnett et al. 2014, BMC Evolutionary Biology 14: 70
- Cooper et al. 2021, PeerJ 9: e10504 (lion habitat through the Holocene)
- University of Kent Barbary Lion project, history of lions in North Africa (secondary)
- Black et al. 2013, PLOS ONE 8: e60174 (Barbary lion)