Why do these lionesses in Botswana have manes?
There’s a place called Mombo in Botswana’s Moremi Game Reserve that houses some very peculiar lionesses. These female lions are maned - and that doesn’t mean just a few tufts of hair around their necks and chests - their manes are so luxurious, they can often fool competing lions into thinking they’re males. While there are just a handful of these maned lionesses in Mombo, they’re a regular sight for the locals, and researchers suspect that this population carries a genetic disposition towards the highly unusual trait. According to Christine Dell’Amore at National Geographic , it’s thought that these ‘masculine’ females are born from embryos whose development has been compromised either at the point of conception, or while they’re forming in the womb. “If the former case, the genetic contribution of the sperm - which determines the sex of the foetus in most mammals - was probably aberrant, giving rise to a female with some male characteristics,” Luke Hunter , presid...