• Question from:Mr. Meyers

I figure I ask if any biologist on here has ever concered or just came across any historical documentation that had lions in habitats of Jungles. For me it is a bit trickey because rain forest could as well be a jungle too to some extent...India would be its prime source of jungles, such as bengal which has one of the most dense jungles in the world.

I figure I ask because there are many speculations floating around that the lion shouldent have the title king of the Jungle, but I stumbled on a few cites my self..
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http://wildanimalelite.yuku.com/topic/5 … the-jungle

an it looks legitametly comprehensable that lions did "once live in Jungles all over India, but prefer open grass plains, savanahs, deserts an forest more so a swampy marsh pit or dense jungle.

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  • University of Bristol
  • Posts: 4,230

Leaving aside the inexactitude of the definition of jungle, it seams reasonable to assume that large cats have adapted to changes in their environment over many millenia and thus it is possible that at some point they may have lived in wooded and more lush areas if that was what was available. That said their mode of hunting would not favour that environment but I am sure they would have survived. You will note I say "over many millenia" - citing one book from 150 years ago is completely meaningless and is in no way evidence, as per our replies to previous questions about claw size and animal weight.

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  • QMUL, London
  • Posts: 1,218

You are right that to an extent 'jungle' overlaps with 'rainforest' to a degree, but I'd call the former a subset of the latter. I was taught that jungle is really just a term for especially thick plant growth at ground level. When a big tree comes down and lets the light in, or around the edge of water, you get huge tangles of short plants and this is jungle. So you get jungle in a rainforest.

As such, really the question could be more boiled down to, do you get lions in rainforests and yes you do, in both Africa and as you say, India.

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  • University of Exeter
  • Posts: 1,011

I may be wrong (in which case Dave please correct me..) but I thought most of the African and Asiatic lions were in habitat that we'd normally describe as savanna - so a mix of grass and fairly open, dry forest. That's not to say you never find lions in "jungles" (you do) - but "King of the savanna" would be a more accurate moniker based on contemporary distributions at least.

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  • QMUL, London
  • Posts: 1,218

Most of them are in more open environment it's true, but they do get into rainforests, so I don't think it inappropraite to talk about their potential to be king there. :)

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  • Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  • Posts: 230

The world jungle comes from the Sanskrit 'jangala' which refers to a dense dry thicket, typically a seasonally dry monsoon forest, and one in which lion would certainly be one of the top predators.  Popular literature took the term and applied it in ignorance to many vegetation types which are more structurally complex than the relatively simple forests which North Americans and Europeans are used to, generating confusion along the way?  This has only been exacerbated by popular culture again promulgating the notion of the lion as the king of the jungle, which is patently ridiculous even in jangala, where lions would face competition from leopard and wild dogs, challenges from rhino and elephant, and at least young lion face a risk of predation from dogs, pythons and other predators.

Rainforest has been adopted as a term largely replacing the popular use of jungle, but again this is a term with a specific meaning to do with water relations (rainfall and evaporation rates) and is recognized in many differs forms, including tropical and temperate types.  So in common parlance we aren't much better of, though 'king of the rainforest' is probably more absurd.  I suggest leaving the anthropomorphisms to Disney and thinking about the complexity and richness of the ecological interactions instead.

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  • QMUL, London
  • Posts: 1,218

I didn't know that etymology of that, cool stuff Dan.