Acoustic communication in lions and its use in territoriality.

Abstract

In the fission-fusion societies of lions, acoustic communication plays a vital role in the context of territorial defence. In order to study acoustic communication in lions, many studies have used playback experiments to simulate intrusions of foreign prides. Here, I present a review on the territorial signalling in big cats in general and lions in particular. Additionally, I describe the methods I used to study intra-group communication in a free-ranging lion population in Botswana, Southern Africa, and critically compare them with the methods previously used in other studies.