When male lions reach full maturity, they are ready to take over territory – which means taking over a pride.
When a male lion takes over a pride, the first thing he does is to kill off the previous males offspring. He kills the cubs because they are not biologically related to him, and does not want to spend his energy ensuring that other lions’ genes will be passed on.
However, within days or weeks of losing their cubs, the female lions come into oestrus and mate with the cub-killing male, and produce other cubs.
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