The phrase “a pride of lions” is centuries old, a leftover from a time when English speakers enjoyed giving animal groups witty, descriptive names. “Pride” was most likely picked because people already thought of the lion as proud and noble, the king of beasts. The name also turned out to describe something real, since lions are the only cats that live together in lasting groups.1Animal Behaviour. Group territoriality and the benefits of sociality in the African lion, Panthera leo What scientists now know about those groups makes the word a better fit than its medieval inventors could have guessed.
Where the Phrase Pride of Lions Comes From
The Book of St Albans, printed in England in 1486, contains a list headed “The Compaynys of beestys and fowlys.”2PMLA. The Fifteenth-Century “Associations of Beasts, of Birds, and of Men”: The Earliest Text with “Language for Carvers” That list is the source most often cited for “a pride of lions,” along with many other group names still quoted today. The book did not invent most of these names, though. It was the first major work to preserve them in print.3Book of Saint Albans.com. The Book of Saint Albans (1486) | Origins of Collective Nouns Handwritten copies of similar lists already circulated before 1486, and in 1909 a scholar gathered every known copy to compare them.4PMLA. The Fifteenth-Century “Associations of Beasts, of Birds, and of Men”: The Earliest Text with “Language for Carvers” So the phrase was likely in playful use among educated English speakers some time before it was printed.
These lists were sometimes called “terms of venery,” venery being the old word for the art of hunting. Using the correct term showed you belonged to polite, well-educated society. Many of the names were jokes or wordplay rather than words hunters actually used in the field, and some lists mixed animals with groups of people, such as professions, in the same playful style.
The book is traditionally credited to Dame Juliana Berners, said to be a prioress.5Etudes de stylistique anglaise. The “volcano theory”. The case of collective nouns involving animal groupings It was a guide for gentry covering hunting, hawking and heraldry. No surviving record names the person who first said “pride of lions.”
Why the Word Pride Was Chosen
In heraldry, the lion traditionally stands for courage, nobility, royalty, strength and valour.6Wikipedia. Lion (heraldry) For centuries it was regarded as the “king of beasts,” and it was one of the most common images on coats of arms.7Wikipedia. Lion (heraldry) To a fifteenth-century writer, calling a group of lions a “pride” matched the animal’s reputation for dignity and self-regard.
Many animals in the old lists got names that mocked or teased them, so a kind word for lions was a decision, not the default. In that period “pride” carried a more positive sense of noble bearing, not only the vice of vanity, so the word suited a royal beast.
Many of these names describe a quality people saw in the animal. A “parliament” of owls reflects their solemn look, and a “murder” of crows reflects their dark reputation. “Pride” is best read as a comment on the lion’s character, not a description of its family structure.
A common mistake is to assume medieval writers knew how lions lived. Few English writers in the 1400s had ever seen a wild lion. They knew the animal from stories, heraldry and the occasional royal menagerie, so the name could not have rested on studying lion family groups. The fit with real lion behaviour is a happy accident. Today “pride” is by far the standard term in books, documentaries and science, and scientists use it as a working word for a lion social group.
What a Pride of Lions Really Is
The females in a pride are closely related, often mothers, daughters, sisters and cousins.8Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Genetic structure of lions (<i>Panthera leo</i> L.) in the Selous Game Reserve: implications for the evolution of sociality The pride’s males are much less related to one another than the females are.9Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Genetic structure of lions (<i>Panthera leo</i> L.) in the Selous Game Reserve: implications for the evolution of sociality Prides are also genetically distinct from neighbouring prides, not just separate in behaviour.10Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Genetic structure of lions (<i>Panthera leo</i> L.) in the Selous Game Reserve: implications for the evolution of sociality Asian lions in India live the same way, with related females and cubs in prides and males living separately in teams.11Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Asiatic Lion: Ecology, Economics, and Politics of Conservation
That makes a lion family quite unlike a wolf pack. No single top female rules the others. Most females stay for life in the place where they were born, while males are the newcomers who arrive from outside. The pride’s lasting core is its sisterhood, not its males. Because the females are kin, helping each other with cubs also helps shared family genes, which makes the cooperation easier to understand.
The males form a team, often called a coalition, which takes over and guards a pride. It can be brothers or cousins, but often includes unrelated males. The male team lives alongside the females but is not part of their family line.
Cubs are raised together. A lioness gives birth in hiding and keeps her cubs in a dry riverbed or among rocks for at least a month.12Scientific American. Divided We Fall: Cooperation among Lions Once the cubs can walk, she brings them out to join the pride.13Scientific American. Divided We Fall: Cooperation among Lions Mothers with cubs of similar age form a shared nursery and stay together for about a year and a half.14Scientific American. Divided We Fall: Cooperation among Lions In almost every shared nursery, each cub is allowed to nurse from every mother.15Scientific American. Divided We Fall: Cooperation among Lions
Day to day, mothers lead cubs to nearby kills to eat meat. After a distant hunt, they come back and feed the cubs milk instead. Exhausted mothers often sleep while any cub nurses from them. Lionesses have no strict rank among themselves and help with shared care only when they have cubs of their own.16PubMed. Egalitarianism in female African lions
How Males Join and Leave a Pride
Young males leave their birth pride as they near adulthood, either by choice or when new males drive them out.17Animal Behaviour. Vertebrate Societies Female matrilines and male partnerships: long-term social dynamics of African lions For roughly two and a half years they usually wander as nomads.18Animal Behaviour. Vertebrate Societies Female matrilines and male partnerships: long-term social dynamics of African lions Lone males and pairs often join forces, and nearly half of pairs and trios include unrelated males by the time they win a pride.19Animal Behaviour. Vertebrate Societies Female matrilines and male partnerships: long-term social dynamics of African lions They gain a pride by driving out its resident males.20Animal Behaviour. Vertebrate Societies Female matrilines and male partnerships: long-term social dynamics of African lions
The new arrivals are dangerous to cubs. Incoming males may kill cubs fathered by the previous males, which brings the mothers back into breeding sooner for the new males. Groups of females defend cubs better than single females against new males that might kill them.21Behavioral Ecology. Maternal grouping as a defense against infanticide by males: evidence from field playback experiments on African lions
Larger male teams hold their pride longer.22PubMed Central. Retaliatory killing negatively affects African lion Panthera leo male coalitions in the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem, Tanzania Near villages where people kill lions in revenge for lost livestock, male teams are smaller and their stay shorter.23PubMed Central. Retaliatory killing negatively affects African lion Panthera leo male coalitions in the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem, Tanzania
Young females fare differently. When a mixed group of young lions leaves together, the females soon split off from the males. Females usually stay in or near their home range, though some leave to found new prides, which keeps the female family line going for generations.
Why Lions Are the Only Cats That Live in Prides
Among all cats, only lions are consistently social.24Animal Behaviour. Group territoriality and the benefits of sociality in the African lion, Panthera leo They probably became group-living in Africa before spreading into Europe, Asia and the Americas in the Ice Age.25Journal of Zoology. Evolution of the mane and group-living in the lion (Panthera leo): a review
It is tempting to assume lions group up to take down big prey, and bigger groups can indeed bring down buffalo. But in the lean season, a lone female catching warthogs eats as well as a lioness in a group of five that can bring down buffalo.26Lion Center, University of Minnesota. Why Is It Called a Pride of Lions? Groups of two to four females actually eat less.27Lion Center, University of Minnesota. Why Is It Called a Pride of Lions? Hunting alone cannot explain why early lions first formed small groups.
Strength in numbers over territory is the main benefit. Having more members than your neighbours is a primary benefit of group life in lions.28Animal Behaviour. Group territoriality and the benefits of sociality in the African lion, Panthera leo When played the roars of strangers, lionesses were less likely to approach three intruders than one, and approached three more cautiously.29Animal Behaviour. Roaring and numerical assessment in contests between groups of female lions, Panthera leo They also seemed to judge their own group size, roaring to call absent companions before confronting intruders.30Animal Behaviour. Roaring and numerical assessment in contests between groups of female lions, Panthera leo Mothers roaring together may help keep threatening males away altogether.31Behavioral Ecology. Maternal grouping as a defense against infanticide by males: evidence from field playback experiments on African lions
So when you hear a roar on safari, it is doing several jobs. It announces the pride’s claim to its land, and it helps pride members keep in touch when spread far apart.32Animal Behaviour. Roaring and social communication in African lions: the limitations imposed by listeners
How Big a Pride Is and Why It Splits Up
Large prides usually split into smaller hunting groups, while small prides hunt together.33PubMed Central. Fission‐Fusion Group Dynamics and Cooperative Hunting Stabilise Social Carnivore Populations Hunting groups top out at about four females even in large prides.34PubMed Central. Fission‐Fusion Group Dynamics and Cooperative Hunting Stabilise Social Carnivore Populations Lions mix with the whole pride when prey is scarce or large, and stick with favourite companions when prey is plentiful and small.35PubMed. Effect of ecological factors on fine-scale patterns of social structure in African lions Members stay connected even while apart, which may keep the group together over the long run.36PubMed. Effect of ecological factors on fine-scale patterns of social structure in African lions A pride is better thought of as a family that regularly scatters and regroups than as a clump that moves as one.
That is why a game drive often shows you two or three lionesses rather than a full pride. The rest may be resting several kilometres away, so seeing a few lions doesn’t mean the pride is small. Males are often apart from the females for long stretches.
It also helps to know what a pride is not. A pride has adult females and usually cubs on a fixed home range. Nomads are typically young males on the move with no fixed territory, and a group of young males without females is not a pride.
Pride size and cub survival rise and fall with how much food is available in the lean season.37Journal of Zoology. Ecological correlates of lion social organization (Panthera leo) In a wetland where floods shrink dry land, though, competition for space limited pride size more than food did.38Journal of Mammalogy. The influence of social and environmental factors on organization of African lion (Panthera leo) prides in the Okavango Delta Lionesses with cubs most strongly shaped how big a female group was.39Journal of Mammalogy. The influence of social and environmental factors on organization of African lion (Panthera leo) prides in the Okavango Delta Larger prides spread over bigger areas.40Ecography. Changes in home range size of African lions in relation to pride size and prey biomass in a semi-arid savanna Lions living near herding settlements outside wildlife-sharing schemes survive less well.41Journal of Applied Ecology. Human–wildlife conflict, benefit sharing and the survival of lions in pastoralist community‐based conservancies