hello Home Safari viewers welcome to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical
Garden we're at our lion habitat today with Imani my name is Wendy and I'm here
with my coworker Alexa and we're gonna see if Imani might be interested in
doing a training demonstration for you guys while we learn all about lions so
Alexa is gonna start working with Imani there and we'll have a chance
yeah so today Imani is gonna be working for some tasty meatballs lions are
obligate carnivores which means they have to eat meat and they only eat meat
and that's what they eat to survive so they get lots of different kinds of meat
here at the zoo she's like now I go over here to get the meatball so those of you
who have been to our lion habitat and visited and if you are lucky enough to
see training demonstrations live you'll know that at the centre of this glass
viewing panel we have this big fake tree and it has a couple of arms sticking out
of it that are actually hiding some feed chutes so there's a tube that runs from
all the way out here where we are on this side of the glass down to where
Imani is so that we're able to drop the meatballs down to her safely and so that
she gets reinforced for all of her hard work the training that we do with our
cats is great for them in a couple of different ways one it's physically
stimulating so we can kind of get them up and moving and interacting with us
two it allows them to participate in their own care in certain ways so for
example you saw Alexa was just asking for that open mouth behavior so we can
check her teeth out make sure everything looks healthy and good see if we need to
contact our veterinary dentists or anything like
that I will say - we have some ducklings that have decided to visit the lion
habitat and have been swimming around in the moat so far today
Imani has been interested in watching them but it doesn't seem like she cares
to try to hunt them so that's good but she does get distracted a little bit by
them so if she loses focus we're gonna be pretty understanding because
ducklings are adorable they distract humans all the time - lets see so if you
are familiar with our cats you will also know that Imani has a partner named John
and John and Imani are usually out here together oh that was a good lay down in
order for Imani to be able to focus on her training we have John behind the
scenes waiting his turn to come out but he will be joining us towards the end of
Imani's training session we were gonna try to get John out here and see if they
would train together but John opted out on this beautiful day he said no I don't
feel like participating and that's actually kind of important to talk about
- as often as we can and as many scenarios as we can we like to give our
animals choice and them to have freedom let them decide what their day is gonna
look like if they want to participate in training and enrichment
things like that if they want to be inside or outside animals seem to just
be happier and do better in general but the more choices that they have so John
is choosing not to train today but hopefully will be joining us in a little
bit lions are pretty amazing cats they're my
favorite species of cats and they're different from many other species of cat
there in a few ways we're going to talk about some of those for one lions are the
only species of cat that are considered truly social and they live in big family
units called prides a lion pride can have anywhere from three to thirty
individuals and the majority of the individuals in that pride are going to
be related females so mothers and daughters sisters aunties and nieces and
then in those prides there will be either one dominant male or a few males
sometimes those males are brothers and are related a good example of that but
Lion King demonstrated that beautifully so Mufasa was our alpha male and the
prides of his brothers Scar was also a part of that pride so depending on that
alpha male his personality he may or may not allow brothers to be a part of his
pride but obviously there's a certain risk involved with that if you do have
other males involved in the pride and again Lion King got that part of the
story right as we see that might challenge you am i trying to take over
in the pride the lionesses are actually the ones responsible for hunting so the
lionesses will go out and hunt together and kind of feed the family bring home
the bacon and scientists have actually learned by studying lions in the wild
that individual lions individual lions even have different
roles during a hunt based on their body type based on their skill set so you're
faster quicker females a bit more agile might be responsible
for chasing and flushing a prey item and your bigger stronger bulkier females
would be responsible for tackling that prey item or taking it down and making
the kill that's some pretty cool stuff aside from
lions being the only social cats they are one species of cat that exhibits
sexual dimorphism pretty awesomely so sexual dimorphism means that the boys
and the girls have some pretty major differences between them so a lot of
times that's based on what we can see so we are all getting a good look at Miss
Imani cat right now it was a female and now that she's done with her training
session we're gonna invite John to come out and join her so when John comes out
here you're gonna get to see our male lion and you'll notice one major
difference between the two of them that should be very apparent right off the bat
so male lions actually grow and develop that big beautiful gorgeous furry mane
that we're all so familiar with and that's so very iconic to the look of the
lion the males develop that big hairy mane because they have all this extra
testosterone in their bodies and testosterone means more hair as maybe
some of our viewers out there can relate to you're right so if John's choose us
to join us which again we talked about choice and he doesn't have to if he
doesn't want to but hopefully John will choose to join us and he'll be coming
from the back of our habitat up here if he does come out okay a delicious femur
bone which we're gonna offer to Imani now let's see so we talked about sexual
dimorphism hopefully John will come out and demonstrate that for us while he's
making his way out do take a look at Imani's tail you will notice that she
has a very unique tail for a cat it actually has that pretty black tuft
on the end and a tufted tail is unique to lions as well no other species of cat
has that and the tail tuft actually is not just cool looking it's very
functional and it serves a purpose and how the Lions communicate with one
another so if you have a cat at home you're already gonna be familiar with
how cats use their tails to communicate how they're feeling and what they want
and what their intentions are so some of you might already know that when your
cat gets grouchy one of the first things they'll do is kind of start flicking
their tail around that tuft on the end of the tail kind of just exemplifies
that tail tip and it exaggerates what ever the lion is communicating
with the tail just says it makes it a little easier for anybody reading those
signals to understand what their intensions are what their communicate
is also that tail can be super helpful when the lionesses are out hunting
especially if they are stalking prey items if they've split up and they're
hiding in grass they can actually just take that tail flick it up in the air
almost use it as a little signal flag to signal their positions to one each other
to one another and to kind of signal and communicate where they need their sister
to go or mom needs to go who's doing what at what time so it's pretty cool
functional and it's just very impressive looking
bonus bone for Imani so since John is out here in the habitat but hanging
around at the back I guess you guys anyone who's very familiar with our
habitat will notice some new features out there so we have this brand-new
awesome enrichment tree that's sort of at the center in the back of our habitat
and John's kind of tucked away hiding behind it at this time we also have this
brand new pride rock feature that overlooks our moat and kind of faces one
of our public viewing areas and then these big giant massive logs that we
brought in as well which are great for perching and scratching and these
changes were just done this winter so we just started letting our cats back out
into the space earlier this week and John is not entirely sure that he's
convinced that he likes the changes just yet so that's one of the reasons he's
kind of hanging around at the back still trying to get comfort
will change like some people out there John doesn't love change he just he's
like no I can't things just stay the way they are but he always adjusts well it
gets comfortable with time Imani very different on the other hand Imana came
out day one and loved everything immediately and she's actually laying on
Pride Rock watching the ducklings earlier today that's a great question
so you can hear a lion's roar for up to five miles away so some of you that
lived very close to the zoo might actually be able to hear John roaring
from time to time and Lions will roar to communicate different things to each
other one thing they're communicating to other Lions is their location
so basically male lion would roar to let all the other rival males in the area
know like I'm here this is my habitat the space is taking these ladies are
taken don't bother coming into my territory
it can also roar as a demonstration of how big and strong and healthy they are
so a male lion might ward to kind of show off in front of a female
oh they can also do the roaring as a contact call so the the social unit the
family will start roaring and everybody will join in and do this big chorus of
roars together and sometimes it can just be like a team-building exercise like
get together with your team and you do a chant or a cheer together or a song and
sometimes in their case it's also to contact each other if somebody's gotten
too far away or lost track of the pride they can let each other know hey we're
all here come back come back to our place so very functional lots of reasons
why they might roar they typically do a lot of that demonstration and
territorial roaring at dawn and dusk so especially if you've been here at the
zoo early in the morning or later in the evening one of our evening events you
probably had the privilege of hearing John and Imani
roar which is always
Oh what's happening over here
oh I think one of our guests was asking about how much our Lions weigh so Imani
is weighing in at 307 pounds as of this week and John is tipping the scales at
around 420 pounds so there's about a hundred and twenty pound difference
between them if you can believe it or not sometimes it's hard to see it it's
hard to tell because Imani is a little thicker looking and
John looks more slender but his build is bigger
and John has serious muscle on him so for those of you who are following along
with the home safaris and if you're participating in the activities portion
we have two activities set up for you guys today and you can find information
on both of them on our zoo's website under the Home Safari section the first
activity is going to be perfect especially if you have little ones it's
kind of an art and crafts type field so you're actually gonna be making your own
lion's mane so you're going to use whatever paper products you have around
the house art supplies fun things like that paper plates are great option to
transform yourselves into lions to make your own mane and the second activity
will be great especially for anybody out there who's fairly tech savvy so we're
actually going to encourage you to participate in animal research by
helping scientists sort through camera trap images so you would download the
Zooniverse app that's spelled ZOONIVERSE Zooniverse and then once you have
that app downloaded you would go to snapshot Kruger so that's the specific
project that we're plugging because there's a chance that some of the camera
trap images that you'll see will actually have lions in them which is
awesome so the way it works is scientists working in Kruger National
Park in South Africa set up camera traps all over the park
hoping to snag photos of the animals that live in that area and they're just
trying to collect out on what species of animals live in that area of what
numbers they're in any kind of interactions they're having with each
other and they end up with thousands and thousands of images that can take a
really long time for a few people to sort through so that's where you come in
you guys can help them sort through those images and you're basically gonna
identify whether or not there's an animal in that picture so you kind of
swipe left for no no no animals in this photo must have been a blade of grass
that triggered the camera or something like that and you would swipe right for
yes I see an animal and the cool thing about it is that if you're big into
animals and if you're following us on the Home Safari and you're following our
our zoos Facebook page and you're probably into animals it's really cool
because you never know what animal you're gonna see next in the next image
so you might see Lions you might see warthogs Impala today for the first time
ever I had a honey badger it was so you could kind of get the whole family
involved you can pick out a species of animal that's a goal if you hope
somebody will find like today today we're gonna try we're gonna sort images
until we see an aardvark for example or something cool like that and the best
part about it is that you're actively participating in actual research that's
happening so you're being a wildlife warrior right from their catch you're
helping scientists accomplish their goals out in the wild to try to better
the lives of the animals out there to make a difference and help all these
amazing cool animals like lions make a come back and continue to thrive and survive
we've had a lot of people ask if they're fast and who their favorite keeper is
yeah these guys can be really fast when they want to be absolutely the prey
items that they hunt are faster so lions typically have to rely on teamwork and
cooperation in order to actually successfully captured and kill prey but
they're definitely fast faster than humans for sure and do the Lions have
favorite keepers I guess you would have to ask them thank they do have keepers
that work more frequently with them than other keepers might so I'm the primary
keeper on their routine so I get to see these guys usually five days a week and
we have a couple secondary keepers that work with them as well if it's based off
of familiarity and who feeds them the most I might be their favorite just
because I get to work with them the most at this time but they do have
personalities and they do develop relationships with their care team staff
so yeah they probably do have their own individual preferences but it's hard to
say what they are without being able to ask them
they can swim that's a great question yeah lions are more than capable of
swimming for the most part they don't seem to want to swim at least our lions
don't John and Imani I don't think have ever been in the moat beyond their like
elbows basically of their front legs but if there's enough of a motivation and a
reason to swim for example those ducklings could look real tempting in a
few days time if they're not careful that might be reason enough to go for a
swim John actually has a brother named Baruti
who I believe lives at the Calgary Zoo and Baruti's nickname is the water cat
because he loves to swim and he gets into their moat habitat or their boat
feature of their habitat all the time our cats just aren't particularly interested
in swimming oh that's a great question yes lions can find they do climb
regularly they're actually very good climbers and that's one of the features
of lions that we're hoping to highlight with our new tree that we've built into
our habitat back there we've got that big long log kind of wedged up against
there to give them easy access to get to the top of that tree but in the wild
lions will go up into trees as a safe place to rest and also to get a better
view of the Savannah the habitat to try to scout for prey basically to look at
like alright where's the next meal we'll get up nice and high so we can see
better have a good vantage point oh there's lions demonstrating how they
are protective over food not always great about sharing that's where that
expression the lion's share comes from so the biggest toughest meanest cats in
the pride are gonna make sure that they get their fair share of every meal and
today it looks like that cat is Imani she says I'll fight you for it um yeah
they have fairly individual tastes so a Imani's favorite protein item that she
gets his goat goat is hands-down one of her favorites she loves goat John gets a
couple of different whole prey items and it seems like rabbit is his favorite of
those all right I think that is gonna about do it for us here at the
Cincinnati Zoo lion habitat thank you so much for joining myself my fellow keeper
Alexa and John and Imani of course hope you guys are doing well at home
everybody stay healthy out there and if you would like to tune in tomorrow again
at 3 p.m. we're gonna be visiting with our penguins have a good day