A Mane's a Pain, but Equals Gain for Lions

A big, black mane is hot, shaggy and attracts trophy hunters, but it makes a lion irresistibly sexy to the lionesses, researchers reported.
The bigger and darker the mane, the more mates a lion attracts, and the better his cubs survive, Peyton West and Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
A male with a long, dark mane intimidates other lions and for good reasons, they found. He has higher levels of testosterone and wins fights more often.
But he pays for this. He is hotter than lions with lighter manes, eats less in summer and produces more abnormal sperm, the researchers found.
"We suggest the mane's evolution is the result of sexual selection," said West, a doctoral candidate whose dissertation led to the paper.
Lions' manes vary from light blond to black and can be up to a foot long.
One big question about lions is why the males even have a mane, said West, who studied lions in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park.
Like a peacock's elegant but heavy tail, it signals biological fitness to females. Females choose mates with beautiful tails, or in the case of lions, with big, black manes, because it turns them on. Thus the trait is passed on.
West checked to see what good the mane does to a lion. Some people have suggested it protects the head and shoulders during fights or hunting, but West said their data didn't show the neck and head were a special target.
West set up pairs of model lions with short and long manes and watched to see which ones wild lions would approach. Males chose the short-maned dummy nine out of 10 times, she found, while females approached the darker-maned dummy, 13 out of 14 times.
West also found that the higher the testosterone level in the blood of male lions, the darker the mane. "Therefore, it isn't surprising that females would prefer darker manes and males would be intimidated," West said.

Activists Save Snakes on Festival Day

Indian animal rights activists said Tuesday they had rescued about 50 snakes from cruel treatment by their owners during an annual festival.
Every year the "Naag Panchami" festival draws snake charmers to cities, especially Bombay and Calcutta, hoping to make money from Hindus who believe the snakes bring good luck.But Jyoti Nadkarni from the state-run Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the snakes were often ill-treated.
"Some are defanged in the most unprofessional way. They suffer from mouth infection and their poison gland is punctured. We have kept them under medical observation," she told reporters.
Forest officials would release the healthier snakes in the jungle, animal rights activists said.
For several years animal groups and SPCA inspectors, armed with bags and sacks, have conducted raids before and during the festival to rescue the snakes, many of them cobras.
But undeterred, the snake charmers return every year, gathering in Hindu areas, around temples or at railway stations.
Poor nomads hunt down the snakes in fields and forests during the monsoon season when they come out in the open after their holes are inundated with rain water.
Since the nomads are unable to feed them, the snakes are starved and suffer from severe infections even before being sold to snake charmers, activists say.
"A snake is considered a farmer's friend because of its carnivorous nature. It survives on rats, birds, lizards, frogs and not milk as people would like to offer," said Issac Khemkar, spokesman for the Bombay Natural History Society.
Animal rights activists say hundreds of snakes die during the festival every year, many as a result of drinking milk which causes severe dehydration and allergic reactions.