Thanks for your suggestions about names for our new pride of lions. After long discussions about what to name the Eselenkei pride of lions which includes collared female Nosieki, the Lion Guardians and team have settled on a Maasai name which is befitting for this pride: the Tara Pride.
An interesting thing about this pride is that all individuals seem very spotted. In other parts of the world like South Africa, lions lose their spots once they reach adulthood, but here in East Africa, some lions keep their spots throughout their lives. This pride is full of very spotted individuals so we have therefore decided to name them the Tara pride…. Tara is the Maasai name for spotted.
We have the great honour of introducing you all to the new additions to the Lion Guardian’s care and protection. The Tara pride consists of lioness Nosieki, who we introduced you to previously. She now has two beautiful cubs (one male & one female). Looking extremely cheerful with wobbly legs & eager blue eyes, they were introduced to the other pride members on the 19th of June.
The other pride lioness, called Nasieku which in the Maasai language means the one that comes forward first, has three young cubs who are a few months older than Nosieki’s cubs. The mothers, Nosieki & Nasieku, are respectful and caring to the five young cubs. The father figure in this pride is a big maned male, who is behaving very well with the cubs. He lets them play all around him as he sleeps lazily.
There are also Selenkay and her two lioness companions who seem to visit the rest of the pride infrequently so we don’t know as much about these three lions, but we hope to learn more as time goes on.
True to their nature as carnivores, the Tara pride have killed two adult zebras & an aardvark (a secretive master digger who leaves its holes for all to see) in the past few weeks. No wonder this pride looks so healthy!
cute little cubs with their big ears and big paws! just adorable. so the tara pride has five females and one male. i wonder why selenkay and her two lioness are not close to them. distance cousins who have never been able to get along? the relationship and the in and out of lions within a pride is so interesting to me. and it also saddens me much whenever i see one lone lioness is ousted by a whole pride. at times, there seems to have no reason at all. like one young lioness was kicked out by a pride while the hunting was still good and game was plenty. maybe was due to pride’s many many young cubs. but a single young female who was only a subadult in the Mara? all i could think was her starving to death or being eaten alive by a clan of hyanes. i guess isjust better being young and ousted than being old or injured without a pride.
How beautiful!!! Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful pictures.
Tara is also the ancient Celtic seat of the early kings of Ireland. Very appropriate for the king of beasts.
Thanks for your comments, and for your continued support of the Lion Guardians. We need your donations to keep the project running, so thank you so much for your support! We’ll bring you more photos of the cubs soon!
I was inspired and am in the process of making a series of the lions called ‘Tara Pride’ and I have my own website for the books and find me on facebook, ‘Search’ then type in ‘Tara Pride’ I just finished my second book and am working on the third. I am only 12 but I love writing and immagination.