Two of our collared lions were caught on Max Allen’s camera this August associating with each other. And when a male and female lion “associate”, you know what that means… kittens! Maybe. Female lions have about a 3 month gestation period, so if 10F did get pregnant during her interactions with 36M, then she should be having kittens around now.
Usually, when a female has kittens, her GPS collar will record dozens of locations in the same area, alerting us that she has denned. Unfortunately, 10F’s GPS collar is broken, so we can’t get detailed information about her behavior. However, her collar still sends out a VHF (radio) signal, so it may be possible to determine whether she has given birth by triangulating her location (the old fashioned way) over several days to see whether she is staying in the same location. We’ll let you know if we find any kittens!