The Trilogy is a coalition of 3 male lions who traverse the Klaserie Private Nature Reserve. They’re either caught wreaking havoc with unsuspecting lions, stealing kills or mating with various lionesses. They have no fear and seek to dominate. At the moment, the Trilogy are at the acme of their reign of dominance in the Klaserie Private Nature Reserve.
We often catch the Trilogy boys mating with a range of lionesses that traverse their territory. We’ve had our sights set on cubs for quite sometime now. In April, one of the boys was seen mating with a tawny and a white lioness from the Giraffe pride. The Trilogy were also caught fraternizing with the Ross pride breakaway females. What came as a surprise was the discovery of cubs belonging to the Hercules females. At least our wish of cubs came to fruition. A few weeks ago we saw 4 healthy and happy lion cubs bumbling around in an open area of vegetation.
The Hercules pride is not a pride we see often. With Africa on Foot’s extended traversing rights we have been able to track our fearless Trilogy, gain a better outstanding of the area they are traversing and track the lionesses they are conquering. Because of the location of the Hercules pride cubs, we speculated that they were sired by one of the Trilogy.
All we needed to see was the Trilogy interacting with this pride to prove our theory. A couple of days ago our theory became a stark reality. We saw the Trilogy devouring a giraffe kill together with the Hercules pride adult lionesses and their cubs. They were caught feasting on a giraffe in the evening and the morning. The kill seemed to last for quite sometime, allowing us the perfect opportunity to capture them on camera at night and in the morning.
This is proof that our boys are spreading their genetics far and wide, including into the community of white lions living wild in the Klaserie and Timbavati. Contrary to popular belief, white lions are NOT albino but are leucistic. This means they do have pigmentation, which is present in their paw pads and colour of their lips. They also have a characteristic blue or gold colouring in their eyes. Hopefully we’ll see white lion cubs in the future!
With the presence of new cubs, the Ross pride breakaway lionesses and the Ross pride (2 sub-adults and 2 adult lionesses) it’s going to be an interesting year ahead in terms of lion pride dynamics. There appear to be plenty of lionesses but no dominant leaders, apart from the Trilogy.
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