Thousands of years ago, lions lived across much more of the world, including parts of Europe and Asia; almost all wild lions live in Africa, and a small group lives in India. Lions live in many kinds of places, including grassland, open woodland and scrub; lions do not live in tropical rainforests.

Most kinds of cats live alone, but lions live together in groups called prides. A pride is built around related adult females and their young, plus a few adult males who are not their relatives. Female lions usually stay in the pride they were born into, often for life; young male lions leave the pride they were born in when they grow big enough to compete with the older males; male lions form teams called coalitions, usually of brothers, to take over a pride. A male lion who wins a pride usually holds it for about two years before another group of males replaces him; female lions typically live longer than males in the wild. A pride can have as few as two lions or as many as 40; prides are smaller where food is scarce and larger where there is plenty of prey.

Female lions, called lionesses, do most of the hunting for the pride; male lions hunt too, but much less than females; lions hunt together, which gives them a better chance of getting food; hunting in a group nearly doubles a lion's chance of making a kill. Members of a pride often split into smaller groups, so the whole pride is rarely together at once; hunting lionesses fan out and come at their prey from different directions; lions rely on stalking and a short chase rather than a long run; together, lions can take down animals as big as buffalo and giraffe. Most lion hunts do not succeed.

Lions are meat eaters that hunt big animals such as zebra and wildebeest. When prey is scarce, lions will eat almost any animal and scavenge the kills of other predators. Lions steal food from other hunters such as hyenas and leopards. At a kill, the resident male lion usually eats first. Lions are top predators that help keep their ecosystem healthy.

The lion is a big cat, in the same group as tigers, leopards and jaguars; it is the second-largest big cat in the world, after the tiger; male lions weigh about 330 to 550 pounds (150 to 250 kilograms), and females weigh about 265 to 395 pounds. Both male and female lions have a tuft of fur at the tip of the tail.

Male lions grow a shaggy mane, and no other kind of wild cat grows one; a male lion's mane gets darker as he gets older; a male lion's mane makes him look bigger and more impressive to rivals and to females; a lion's mane is thought to signal how healthy and strong a male is. How full a male lion's mane is can depend on where he lives.

Lions roar to mark their territory and to keep in touch with their own pride. A lion's roar helps strengthen the bond among members of a pride. A lion's roar can be heard from up to five miles (8 kilometers) away. Lions make sounds besides roars, such as grunts; male lions start to roar when they are about one year old, and females start a few months later. Lions can recognize other individual lions.

A lioness carries her cubs for about three and a half months before they are born; a lioness has a litter of cubs about every two years; lion cubs are born with dark spots on their fur; a lioness hides her newborn cubs for the first several weeks while they grow strong. Lionesses in a pride raise their cubs together; lion cubs drink their mother's milk for about six months.

The lions of Tanzania's Serengeti have been studied without a break since 1966, so scientists can follow the same lions from birth to death. George Schaller's 1972 book The Serengeti Lion, from his study of the lions of Tanzania's Serengeti, won a National Book Award and became the foundational text on lions; scientists put tracking collars on lions to follow where they go.

Lions are threatened by habitat loss and by conflict with people over livestock; lions are losing the wild animals they eat, which adds to their decline. When wild prey becomes scarce, lions may turn to hunting farm animals; farmers who lose livestock to lions sometimes kill lions in revenge. People who put out poison for predators also endanger lions, which scavenge carcasses; people kill lions for their body parts, which are sold in the illegal wildlife trade.

As of November 2026, a census in 2025 counted 891 Asiatic lions in the state of Gujarat, India. As of November 2026, about 44 percent of Gujarat's Asiatic lions live outside protected forests, among farmland, roads and villages.

The lions of Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater are a small, isolated group of about 60, and genetic studies decades apart both found signs of inbreeding in them.

As of November 2026, lion numbers in Africa have dropped by about half in roughly 25 to 30 years. As of November 2026, an estimated 22,000 to 25,000 wild lions remain in Africa. As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List lists the lion as Vulnerable to extinction.

Words to know

• inbreeding: mating between relatives
• isolated: cut off
• carcasses: dead animals
• census: a count
• coalitions: teams of males