Lion with nine lives breaks record with longest swim in predator-infested waters

Dr Alexander Braczkowski, from Griffith’s Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, led a team that filmed a two-male lion coalition crossing the Kazinga Channel in Uganda at night, using high-definition heat detection cameras on drones. The work was done under the supervision of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

One half of the lion brother duo was a 10-year-old local icon known as Jacob, who became famous for surviving a multitude of life-threatening incidents, one of which left him with an amputated leg.

“Jacob has had the most incredible journey and really is a cat with nine lives,” Dr Braczkowski said.

“I’d bet all my belongings that we are looking at Africa’s most resilient lion: he has been gored by a buffalo, his family was poisoned for lion body part trade, he was caught in a poacher’s snare, and finally lost his leg in another attempted poaching incident where he was caught in a steel trap.

“The fact that he and his brother Tibu have managed to survive as long as they have in a national park that has experienced significant human pressures and high poaching rates is a feat in itself — our science has shown this population has nearly halved in just 5 years.

“His swim, across a channel filled with high densities of hippos and crocodiles, is a record-breaker and is a truly amazing show of resilience in the face of such risk.”

Previous reported swims by African lions have ranged from 10 to a couple of hundred metres, some of which resulted in deaths by crocodile attacks.

The big swim prompts a key question: why did Jacob and Tibu risk the dangerous kilometre-long night swim in the first place?

“It’s likely the brothers were looking for females,” Dr Braczkowski explained.

“Competition for lionesses in the park is fierce and they lost a fight for female affection in the hours leading up to the swim, so it’s likely the duo mounted the risky journey to get to the females on the other side of the channel.”

“There is a small connecting bridge to the other side but the presence of people was probably a deterrent for them.”

Dr Braczkowski has been running a long-term study of African lions and other predators in Queen Elizabeth and several other Ugandan National Parks.

He is currently the scientific director of the Volcanoes Safaris Partnership Trust’s Kyambura Lion Project and has been working with the Ugandan Government since 2017 to build scientific capacity in the wildlife department to census lions and other predators.

This behavioural observation is a direct symptom of some of his previous research, highlighting skewed sex ratios in lion populations.

“Jacob and Tibu’s big swim is another important example that some of our most beloved wildlife species are having to make tough decisions just to find homes and mates in a human-dominated world,” Dr Braczkowski said.