Lions in the Serengeti and in the Ngorongoro Crater have been studied continuously by a number of scientists since the 1960's. Today, lion research in East Africa is supervised by Craig Packer. Dr. Packer is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor who teaches at the University of Minnesota located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Packer completed his Ph.D. in 1977 at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. In 1978, Craig and his wife Anne Pusey began studying the lions in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.

The Serengeti National Park is approximately 5,100 square miles in area and is famous for both the annual wildebeest migration and the large resident population of lions. Along the northern boundary of the Serengeti is the Masai Mara National Park in Kenya. To the east of the Serengeti is the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area, a 10 mile by 12 mile volcanic crater that has over 50,000 animals living permanently on the crater floor.

Dr. Packer has two graduate assistants in the Serengeti who spend about 6 months per year in Africa studying lion behavior. They keep track of all the lions in the south eastern portion of the Serengeti plus track the lions that reside in the Ngorongoro Crater. Students live in the "Lion House", which is located in the Serengeti Wildlife Research Institute, a collection of buildings and research offices in the middle of the Serengeti National Park.

Current Serengeti Projects:

One of Dr. Packer's students, Karyl Whitman, is monitoring the lions in the Maswa Game Reserve, which is an area adjacent to the Serengeti National Park. The hunting of lions is still allowed on a limited basis in the Maswa Game Reserve and the student's research project is to measure the impact of lion trophy hunting on the overall lion population in the Serengeti. Since male lions from the Serengeti do migrate into the Game Reserve and are shot, they are trying to determine if prides which lose their males frequently suffer more frequent male takeovers and therefore cannot raise cubs because of the constant infanticide caused by the new male coalitions.

Whenever a new male coalition takes over a pride, the new males kill all the cubs reared by the previous males. Cubs take up to two years to grow large enough to survive on their own, so if lion trophy hunting is killing the males of a pride on a more frequent basis, then no cubs will survive and the pride may eventually die out.

A second student,Peyton West, is studying why male lions have different types of manes. More information can be found at Lion Mane Research in the Serengeti.

A list of the research questions we are trying to find answers to is at Serengeti Research Questions.