Tree climbing lions let viewers ponder mystery
Scattered prides of lions like to tackle trees, though the majority share the attitude, "Why bother?"
The lions we saw weren’t about to climb any trees. It was too hot.
Reasons why lions climb trees are thought to be for observing their prey, escaping the heat and avoiding insect bites.
Tree climbing among the great cats is usually limited to leopards, excellent climbers that carry their kills into tree to protect them from scavengers. Lions occasionally climb trees, but only a few wind up being good at it.
Read more about tree climbing lions.
We missed seeing the famous tree-climbing lions of Lake Manyara in Tanzania when we drove past without stopping, between Arusha and the Serengeti.
The lions we saw in Ngorongoro Crater on the way to the Serengeti Plain showed no interest in climbing trees. On the Serengeti, a pride of a dozen sprawled under trees for shade, but climbing a tree would not have made them any cooler.
I think simple curiosity got lions up in the trees, then they passed the behavoir to their offspring. Which is why lions in a few areas climb trees but most don’t bother. Trees would need to be of a particular type: stout trunks with easy to reach horizontal-trending branches without thorns.
Lions aren’t particularly good climbers and had no evolutionary need to climb trees, since they are the king of the jungle. A tree perch may let a breeze cool them a bit better and maybe there will be fewer insects, but by and large they probably climb trees because they want to.
Trying to figure out why cats do things can be a lifelong endeavor for a human.
Maybe lions climb trees for no other reason than to provide good family portrait photo ops.