The current ’Lion’ is called West African and all the descriptions say West African, Critcially endangered, max size reflects west African etc….but the mane is much too large for west African (clearly based on southern), the map shows the whole lion range and behaviourally it can live in a pride of up to 30+ which is not something seen for West African lions (or Asiatic or, historically, Barbary). Male lions actually tend to live separately for those northern subspecies.What mix and match? It's the West African lion, a genetically significant subpopulation of the Northern lion. There's nothing confusing about it, it's just hyperspecific for no reason.
A generic "Lion" or a generic "African Lion" makes sense from a realism perspective. Aside from the few zoos that keep genetically pure Asiatic lions (easily done since they are genetically isolated in the Gir Forest), most zoos do have generic "African lions"; that is to say, they are hybridised between different subpopulations and even between the two subspecies. I'm sure some are "genetically pure" subspecies (either northern or southern) but like chimpanzees, zebras, and many other species the studbook is so muddy that it isn't worth it for zoos to figure out the exact genetic makeup since in terms of conservation it doesn't really matter.
"African lion" and "Asiatic lion" would be a perfect split.
I’d be happy with African and asiatic split - that would more realistically reflect most zoo classifications. And agree that many zoo’s have ‘African’ that are hybrids of african subspecies. Just didn’t like the idea of some posts on this thread (and others) that there should be one ‘lion’.
I definitely would like another lion. There seems such a downer on cat species from many because their view is that they would like other ‘new’ animals or building pieces instead but this animal is one of THE iconic zoo animals that is increasingly under threat in the wild so really could do with some tlc to make it better in my view.