Lions

"And lions are fierce. It's kinda common knowledge, really . .."

- Ono, Return of the Roar

Lions are animals that appear in The Lion Guard universe. They live in the Pride Lands, and are some of the main characters in the series.

In the Real World
Physically, lions are a tawny golden color, and are the only cats whose sexes can be told apart at a distance. Males bare thick, shaggy manes of either blond, black, red, or brown, while lionesses are barren around the neck. Both sexes have a tail tuft, always black in color, though cubs are born without this tuft. Lion eyes are most commonly amber, but brown, green, and blue eyed lions have been observed. A male lion is roughly twice the weight of a female, at 420 pounds, while lionesses only weigh 290. Rarely, a pair of lions will give birth to a white lion. The age of a lion can be told by examining how dark its nose is.

In The Lion Guard
As far as looks go, lions in the Lion King franchise are far more diverse. They range from gold, cream, tawny, tan, brown, and reddish-brown. Their eyes have a wide color range as well, including brown, red, orange, green, and blue. For Pride Landers, the males are usually portrayed as being bigger and more muscular than the lionesses, and are also identifiable by their manes. They tend to have brightly-colored fur, often yellow or orange shades, with goldish undertones. Their manes are most often red or orange. However, the paintings of Scar's Lion Guard showed that they all had dark fur tones and brown manes, and another painting in The Lair of the Lion Guard depicted a Guard with black manes. The lionesses, meanwhile, are more slender, built for hunting and speed. They tend to have duller and/or paler colors than the males.

In the Real World
Lions live in different parts of Africa and Asia. They are the second largest big cat after the tiger. They spend around 16-20 hours of their day sleeping and resting. A lion's roar can be heard from 5 miles away.

When lionesses come into heat, the male lion will indiscriminately mate with all of them to increase the chance of spreading his genes via offspring. Cubs may be born to different mothers or share a father if only one male is present. Cubs born in the same litter may also have different fathers, especially if the pride that they and their mother are a part of is dominated by more than one male. Even if the litter consists of only two cubs, there is still a chance that they may only be half-siblings, whether their mother mated with a rogue male in addition to the pride male or if the pride consists of two males and the mother mated with them both.

In The Lion Guard
The lions in the film and series look and behave markedly different from actual lions on the Serengeti. The Pride Landers are the only known pride of lions throughout the franchise.

Pride Landers operate in a monarchy, where the firstborn child of the current ruler sits in line for the throne as the crown prince or princess. This child is anointed and presented before the animals of the Kingdom in a ceremony that occurs early in the morning. The second-born cub is gifted with the Roar of the Elders and leads the Lion Guard as the fiercest member.

Hyenas are generally treated as enemies because they do not follow the Circle of Life. However, Kion, a lion cub, befriended the spunky hyena Jasiri during the episode Never Judge a Hyena by Its Spots.

The Lion Guard
The lions Kion, Kiara, Simba, Nala, Mufasa, Tiifu, and Zuri all appear throughout the series The Lion Guard.

Notable Lions in The Lion Guard

 * Kion
 * Kiara
 * Simba
 * Nala
 * Mufasa
 * Scar
 * Tiifu
 * Zuri
 * Nuka
 * Kovu
 * Vitani

Trivia

 * According to the directors of The Lion King, male lions were given whiskers and females were without them during finalization because they were hard to animate. This appears to have been continued in The Lion Guard, as Kion and Simba are given whiskers while Nala, Kiara, Tiifu, and Zuri do not have any.


 * Lions are featured in the UnBungalievable shorts Who's Mightier? and Who's Louder?