The Santiago Zoo webpage tells us that lions walk for two hours daily travelling an average of around 9.5 kilometers. The Sunquists in Wild Cats of the World tell us that:
“Along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast lions hunt fur seals, walking as far as 50 kilometers a day along the beach, scavenging for cormorant and seal carcasses washed up by the tide”.
Fifty kilometers is 31 miles. I’ll speculate that this is around the upper limit for the distance that a lion travels in one day judging by the tone of the quote. No doubt, there will be exceptions.
A study on the ncbi.nlm.nih.gov website (Home Range Utilisation and Territorial Behaviour of Lions (Panthera leo) on Karongwe Game Reserve, South Africa) includes the following quote:
“The pride male covered an average distance of 0.45±0.07 km/hr…..The largest distance covered in one six hour observation was 12.0 km. On nine nights the pride male and any associated lions with him did not walk at all.”
Conclusion: when lions are travelling they walk up to 10 kilometres a day but as much as 50 kilometres on occasions.
P.S. There is little information available on this topic. I’d appreciate a comment to fill out the post 😉 .
