quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:

quote:

that was aged by a tooth at 11 years old.

Just a point of clarification while we are on the subject...it would be hard to call a lion exactly 11 based on x-ray and physical exam of tooth based on what we know now. You could say that he is 7 or greater and possibly say he is likely a few years older than 7 but you really can't say he is exactly 11. Just a small point that I thought we should mention in passing.

Lions in captivity have been known to live up to and maybe slightly past 15 yrs. An old wild lion would be over 8 years...probably not that many over 10 live in the wild. Again...just a point of clarification while we are on the subject. I am not saying he is not 11 and is a very fine trophy.

Lane - Elaborate on this a bit more will ya please!

That was very educational. Thank you.

Interesting read.

The original post has got to be about the best post I have seen on AR in a LONG time. I have skimmed it, but will go back and re-read it periodically.
Very nice job.
Peter.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter:
The original post has got to be about the best post I have seen on AR in a LONG time. I have skimmed it, but will go back and re-read it periodically.
Very nice job.
Peter.

Peter - Thanks man! Please let us all know if you any questions, comments or general info to add, that could be helpful to us all?

Thank you Saeed and others that suggested a specific forum be started.

Ladies and gentlemen and fellow LCTF members and participants; In my role with TGTS and WWS, I have had the good fortune to put in practice most of what has been dicussed over recent weeks/months. I believe that the 10 or so years of experience gained through this process with these companies has given me and my colleagues a lot of insight, often through unfortunate trial and error, into the aging of wild lions.

Below are a few observations:
1- Trying to accurately (And by accurately I mean whitin 10 - 12 mths) age a wild lion from a trophy photo alone - or even from a regular photo of a live lion - is fairly innacurate. The same lion can be photographed several times by the same camera within a few minutes and the image results can be quite different. This in particular reference to trying to use body color and mane color as an age indicator from a photograph!
2- Therefore, if one is to try and age a lion from a set of trophy photos, of absolute necessity is to obtain photos showing;
- the entire body,
- close-up of the nose
- Close-up of the teeth
- Frontal picture showing the face and "crown"
- Any other obvious distinguishing features such as the spinal column, back leg markings, etc
In addition to the above, once the skull has been skinned and cleaned, and BEFORE BLEACHING, additional pictures should be taken of:
- close-up of all canine including showing the "canine ridge"
- close-up of incisors
- Close-up of molars from the top and inside looking out (upper and lower jaw can be separated to achieve this).
Below are a couple of examples of such photos;






canine ridge




The canine ridge wear I have always found to be a good indicator. Again, this indicator helps in putting the lion's age into age groups only! I have found that lions 5 and older will often have distinct wear on the ridge of the canine and practically 100% of the lions that i have estimated to be 6 or older have shown wear on this ridge and 100% of the lions I have aged under 5 have NOT shown wear on this ridge. Lions aged between 5 and 6 have shown ridge wear in approximately 40% of the times. Below and above are an example of the ridge wear I speak off.




and the lion it belongs to (Note the prominent spine indicative of an older lion!) :



vs a canine showing no or very little ridge wear:





A quick word on the prominent spine: I have noticed that this is only very distinct in cats that are a few years older than 6! If I see this indicator, 9 times out of 10 the other indicators will confirm the cat is well over 6!
3- Obtaining a tooth x-ray of the premolar is very simple and extremely useful in helping to confirm all the "visual" and physical signs of age from a set of photos.
4- In addition to set of photos and tooth x-ray, I place a huge importance on the physical examination of the cleaned skull. The wear on the teeth has shown us to be a hugely important criteria to age determination.
5- The combination of all this data was used over a period of 3-4 years to compare with photos of Known age lions from researcher's database to assist us all in learning what to look for in a 6 year old lion. What we immeadiately noticed, is that initially, we were mostly over estimating the age of lions by as much as 2-3 years! A perfect example is the below lion.



The Ph (and most all concurred) aged this lion at around 6 year old when it was taken (2005). Upon further examination of the teeth, x-ray and skull, the age estimation was set at between 4 - 5 years old! Below is the x-ray of this cat's pre-molar confirming this:



The bottom line, and I have said this before here on AR, learning to age wild lions prior to shooting them is a learning curve and will take a couple of years to streamline to a point where the taking of a sub 6 yo lion are an exception rather than the norm....BUT, mistakes will continue to occur.

One of the challenges that I have thrown to the scientific fraternity (WCS, C Packer, P Viljoen, et alia)is to strive to obtain as much tooth x-ray and tooth wear photographic data as possible from Known aged lions across the continent and allow this data to be freely shared! I even encouraged them to work with zoos around the world to obtain x-rays of their known aged lions! I firmly believe that the more one "studies" the entire set of data (photos, x-ray, skull examinations, tooth wear pictures and so on), the more they will be able to confidently age lions in the wild prior to being shot.

If we look at the below skull image of the lion recently taken in Zim, one can notice that there is very little wear on the canine, incisors and the molars (You have to zoom in). The "ridges" of the molars are very sharp and pointed, all incisors are intact and appear quite "white".



I would age this lion at around 4 from an overall assessment of the photos available.

quote:

Lane - Elaborate on this a bit more will ya please!

Certainly.

All mammals as they age...narrow their pulp cavities with cementum (a medium hard component of tooth structure).



Some animals like white-tail deer and red fox to name a few...lay down layers annually making layer counting possible for age estimation.

Lions though don't conform. Probably due to a very eratic diet...they lay down cementum layers (Cementum Annuli) eratically making that method (at least as we know how to use it now) unreliable.

We do know that the lion pulp cavity gets remarkably and reliably narrow by 5-6 years of age...then narrows continually but by smaller increments through the end of life.


~4 year old lion 2nd upper premolar this is a known aged lion (photo courtesy of CP)


(borrowed from Bwanamich with captions added)


probable 6 year old harvested in Tanzania

So...x-rays relably can catagorize lions into less than 5, 5-7, and >7...they cannot tell exact age nor can counting cementum annuli.

With wear patterns and x-rays...good estimations can be made (certainly good enough to put the lion at 5 or > but exact ages can ont be given.

Bwanamitch,

Good job and very informative.

Your 4-5 year old does indeed look older and no one is going to penalize a PH for that margin of error.

Personally I think the age restriction should be as low as 5 as I believe there are a number of these Lions that cannot infiltrate a pride and if they are singular then they are good ones to take.

What we have witnessed recently are 2-3 year olds which is not on and the PH's have made some bad calls. To be honest the so called legal argument is very weak and no one comes to Africa to hunt the young and immature. This is not what trophy hunting is about and it is up to the PH to take the biggest and best out of the area.

HI Andrew,

I agree on "that" 4 yo as it is an exception to any rule and will not be a frequent occurrence.

On the issue of whether the rule should be 5 or 6, my vote lies on 6, simply because when we tried to apply a 5 year rule at the beginning, we still were targetting too many 4-5 yo. in other words, the "marginal" lions if the rule is set at 5 yo will be a 4.5 yo for example. It is difficult to age a lion accurately between a 4.5 and a 4.11 and if one were to take the latter, should they be penalized for it seeing that it is soo close to 5??

The minimum bar HAS to be set higher so that with a 10 - 12mth error margin on the low side, a lion shot will still be 5 yo or older!

In real life, we should all be striving to only hunt an 8+ yo as the chances that it is still breeding are very slim compared to a 6 yo which in many cases IS still breeding!

Not sure if I am making my point clear here?

quote:

Originally posted by Bwanamich:



The Ph (and most all concurred) aged this lion at around 6 year old when it was taken (2005). Upon further examination of the teeth, x-ray and skull, the age estimation was set at between 4 - 5 years old!

Would be hard to pass up this guy..
Any pictures of his nose?

Aaron, Lane, and Bwanamich…This is a nicely presented topic and is very informative. What strikes me initially is the information is structured with a desire to educate and develop solutions as opposed to simply pointing fingers.

The various photos help to offer a nice visual reference point of things to consider as well. Together the narrative and photos help to describe specifically what a hunter should be educating him/herself about if hunting a lion is in their future. It is also useful for those interested in learning how hunting lion is a necessary management tool.

I will be directing others to this link and am excited to see more of this type of dialog and information presented on AR!

quote:

Originally posted by ozhunter:

quote:

Originally posted by Bwanamich:



The Ph (and most all concurred) aged this lion at around 6 year old when it was taken (2005). Upon further examination of the teeth, x-ray and skull, the age estimation was set at between 4 - 5 years old!

Would be hard to pass up this guy..
Any pictures of his nose?

Ozhunter - I agree, this one would be tough to pass. I honestly believe, unless in the case of "knowing" this lion was 4-5 yrs old, no one would pass him up? As Bwana mentions, most of em thought this lion was 6 yrs old.

Express Yourself - Thanks man!!

TTT

quote:

Ozhunter - I agree, this one would be tough to pass. I honestly believe, unless in the case of "knowing" this lion was 4-5 yrs old, no one would pass him up? As Bwana mentions, most of em thought this lion was 6 yrs old.

How would this situation be handled with the current laws in TZ?