The St. Louis Zoo welcomed Araali, a 6-year-old African lioness, for her public debut Sept. 22. A 12-year-old male named Bantu is expected to join her later in the fall.
According to STLtoday.com, Bantu is expected to join Araali later in the fall.
The Zoo's Lion Population
Cabara and Ingozi had produced several litters during their time in St. Louis.
Why Lions Live in Groups
Lions are social creatures, and their social structure includes what's known as a fission-fusion society, a relatively rare system in which groups regularly come together and split apart, according to globalconservation.org.
That social dynamic matters beyond zoo enclosures. African lion numbers have plummeted by more than 40% over the last three generations, largely due to habitat loss and conflict with people, globalconservation.org reports, and only around 20,000 lions remain in the wild, a figure that has led the IUCN to classify the species as vulnerable. The African Lion Database Project attributes the species' decline to a combination of habitat loss and conversion, human-lion conflict tied to livestock protection, and depletion of prey linked largely to poaching and the bushmeat trade.
The World Wildlife Fund says lions have lost 90% of their habitat over the past century and are now locally extinct in 26 African countries, with the overall population falling from roughly 200,000 historically to just over 20,000 today — a decline of about 50% in the last 25 years alone, according to WWF.
What Comes Next at the Zoo
Araali's public debut brings the lioness before zoo visitors, and Bantu is expected to join her later in the fall.
