Lion vs. tiger: which of these felines would win in a fight and be crowned “King of the Animals”?

Who would win in a fight – a tiger or a lion? There are few reports of encounters between these two majestic felines, but the King of the Jungle may not always be who you expected…

Lions and tigers are quite equivalentboth in size and in natural armament, so it is not at all obvious which would have the advantage if, suddenly, tufts of fur began to fly through the air.

A good indicator, for those who like to place bets, could be the fact that lions hunt and defend themselves in groups, while lions tigers are known for being lonerswhich could put the latter at an advantage in an individual confrontation.

Nowadays, there are few opportunities to verify what the outcome of the confrontation between the two animals would be. Historically, the two species coexisted in the Middle East and South Asia, but this is no longer the case, notes .

Currently, the tigers are confined to South and East Asiawhile the lions live especially in Africa. Even the small lion population that still exists in western India is quite far from the nearest tiger habitat.

What we actually have are reports of encounters in artificial environments. One of the most told stories involves a dispute organized by an Indian maharaja named Sayajirao Gaekwad IIIat the end of the 19th century, to determine whether the lion or the tiger was more worthy of the title ‘king of beasts’.

It is said that the fight took place in front of thousands of spectators and that it was the tiger who claimed the title, after a long and bloody battle. However, the lack of concrete evidence suggests that it is nothing more than a widely circulated myth.

More credible are the reports of incidents in zoos and circusesall over the world. One of them, described by Charles Darwin in 1871involves a captive tiger in England that killed a lion after you manage to get into your cage.

And in 2010, at the Ankara Zoo in Turkey, a male tiger named Kadir killed a male lion in an adjacent cage by crossing a small opening in the fence and cut the lion’s jugular vein with a single swipe of its claws.

But Tigers don’t always win. In 1949, newspapers reported that a lion killed a tiger at the South Perth Zoo in Australia. And in 1951, during a circus performance in Detroit, in the United States, a lion attacked and killed a tiger “in front of three thousand screaming children”.

So it seems that a lion can actually kill a tiger — if the tiger doesn’t kill the lion first…