Lions

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

- Ono, The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar Lions are felines that appear in The Lion Guard universe. They live in the Pride Lands and the Outlands and are some of the major 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 Guard 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 Lander lions, 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. Simba's Pride operates 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.

Lions of the Outlands
Jasiri takes Kion to the Outlands after telling him about lions taking over her family's watering hole. Here, Kion meets Nuka and Kovu, a pair of young male lions who decide to take him to their mother. He follows them to the watering hole and encounters a lioness, Zira, with her daughter Vitani. Zira talks to Kion and sings Lions Over All.

At the Lair of the Lion Guard, Rafiki tells the story of how Zira and her family were banished. His paintings show them leaving the Pride Lands.

Back in the Outlands, Kion denies Zira's request to join her. He ends up trapped by her lionesses until Jasiri and the Lion Guard arrive. They begin to fight, and Zira points out that her lions outnumber them. But after being prompted by his best friend Bunga, Kion uses the Roar of the Elders to blast the Outlander lions away.

Notable Lions in The Lion Guard

 * Kion
 * Kiara
 * Simba
 * Nala
 * Mufasa
 * Scar
 * Tiifu
 * Zuri
 * Nuka
 * Kovu
 * Vitani
 * Zira
 * Lioness
 * Nala's Father
 * Askari
 * Rani

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, Simba, Mufasa, Scar, Kovu, and Nuka are given whiskers while Nala, Kiara, Tiifu, Zuri, Vitani, Rani, and Zira do not have any.
 * Lions are featured in the UnBungalievable shorts Who's Mightier? and Who's Louder?