“It doesn’t matter where you are so long as you can hear lions roaring.” People shouldn’t be allowed to write sentences like that. Now I’m all unsettled. It comes from my old friend Brian Jackman’s new book Lion Song and it’s got me hankering after the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. Again.

“When you’ve been away from lions a long time, you long for a glimpse of them, and whenever I return to Africa, I lie awake at night, unable to sleep until I hear them grunting in the starlight.”

Yeah, Brian, I know. Me too.

The roar is the soul of the lion. Lions can recognise every individual from the roar: members of their own pride, members of rival prides from the adjoining country. They can also tell where the roar is coming from and how many lions are roaring.

They roar because one lion is no lion. Lions crave company just as we humans do. They’re the only social cats: all others species are cats that walk by themselves. But lions need each other on a daily basis. The group may split and splinter but the pride remains together: never out of earshot.

A lion’s roar is not the petulant snarl you get at the start of an MGM film: it’s more like the sound of a god vomiting after an almighty bender. You’d think the earth might break under the force of it.

Lions roar alone and they roar together: and a full pride chorus coming out of the African night is the most wonderful sound in all nature. You lie in your tent or your hut as the night is ripped apart once again: fear and delight, familiar bedfellows, fight for the mastery.

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/lion-song/brian-jackman/9781917523998

https://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/group-tours/walking-safari-in-heart-of-zambia