002 Male Lion prowling in the Serengeti National Park Photo by Giles Laurent

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Photo: Giles Laurent · CC BY-SA 4.0

SpeciesCarnivoraFelidae

Carnivores

🦁Lion

Panthera leo (Linnaeus, 1758)

The lion is a large cat of the genus Panthera, currently ranging only in Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; a short, rounded head; round ears; and a dark, hairy tuft at the tip of its tail. It is sexually dimorphic; adult male lions are larger than females and have a prominent mane that extends from the head to the shoulders and chest.

Text: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Videos

2,957

Photos

Measurements

vs you

≈ 2.4× your weight

Also called

African Lion

Conservation status

VUVulnerable

IUCN Red List assessment, 2025.

Population trendDecreasing

Key measurements

Body mass: 149 kg
Body length: 2.17 m
Shoulder height: 1.15 m
Top speed: 55 km/h
Bite force: 1,768 N
Maximum lifespan: 30 years

All measurements ↓

Facts and figures

Everything we know about the Lion

Typical adult figures. Where a value is an estimate rather than a measurement, it says so.

Body mass

149 kg

COMBINE

Other figures ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0

By sex

Female126 kgWikidataQ140
Male188 kgWikidataQ140

Figures vary

175 kgAnAgeAnAge build 15, 2023-07-03 (HAGR)data quality: acceptable

Body length

2.17 m

COMBINE

Details ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0

Shoulder height

1.15 maverage1.07–1.23 m · range across sexes

Other figures ↓

Species-level value synthesised as the mean of: female, male.

By sex

Male1.23 mHaas, Hayssen & Krausman 2005, Mammalian Species 762, p.2Height at the shoulder. Supersedes the 1.10 m seed row, which had no page-level source.
Female1.07 mHaas, Hayssen & Krausman 2005, Mammalian Species 762, p.2Height at the shoulder.

Top speed

55 km/h

Details ↓

Sprint over a short distance, not a sustained pace. Peer-reviewed compilations give 54.95 and 57.35 km/h. The 80 km/h figure in wide circulation, and in the site mock, is Hirt's reference 101 -- speedofanimals.com, which carries no citations at all.

Source: Christiansen 2002, Zool J Linn Soc 136:685 and Bejan & Marden 2006, J Exp Biol 209:238; compiled in Hirt et al. 2017, Nat Ecol Evol 1:1116, Supplementary Data · see citation

Bite force

1,768 N

Details ↓

Canine bite modelled by the dry-skull method (Thomason 1991) from a prepared skull; static bite at the canines, gape not stated. Not a live measurement. The skull's estimated body mass was 294.6 kg. Estimates for this species span 2.4x: 1104 N and 1483 N by two of Thomason's own methods, 2609 N by Rozycka et al. 2024, and c. 3300 N by finite elements for a 267 kg animal (McHenry et al. 2007). The one MEASURED value sits mid-range: 1594 N at the incisors of a captive lioness (van der Meijden et al. 2023, J Exp Biol 226:jeb245255).

Source: Wroe, McHenry & Thomason 2005, Proc R Soc B 272:619, Table 1 · see citation

Bite force for its size

112

Details ↓

Bite force normalised for body mass: the residual of canine bite force regressed on body mass, average across the sample set to 100. Above 100 means the animal bites harder than its size predicts. Do not cross-check against Wikipedia's BFQ table, which silently mixes this paper with Christiansen & Wroe 2007 and cites a popular-science book.

Source: Wroe, McHenry & Thomason 2005, Proc R Soc B 272:619, Table 1 · see citation

Brain mass

237 g

COMBINE

Details ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0

Maximum lifespan

30 years

COMBINE

Other figures ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0