Coat color
Related: White Lion and leucistic.


Their short coat is sand-colored, yellow-gold or dark tan. The inside of the legs is always clear, as the belly, buff males, almost white in the female. The cubs have dark spots on the entire body, but disappear already during the first year. In very rare cases, these spots are still visible in adulthood, but remain insignificant, being visible as près

As with tigers, lions exist in occasional cases of leucistic; least a hundred spécimens in the world possess this genetic uniqueness due to a recessive gene, which gives a blonde color, cream or white coat. The leucistic is different from albinism, and poses no direct problem on the physiology of a animalNote. The eyes retain their pigments and usually stay normal color (hazel or gold), but can also be blue-gray or gray-green. The lips and pads are also normally pigmented.

In the male leucistique, the mane and the tail tip, usually dark or black, are very pale. The best-known specimens are probably the white lions of Timbavati in South Africa, where two white lions were born of a lioness and a lion tawny privée in a nature reserve. Chris McBride was the first to observe them in October 1975 and has written two books on the subject. In 2005, two young lions with white fur and blue eyes are born in a zoo near Agen10 and four Jurques the zoo, near Caen, May 20, 2007, two white parents également Beauval Zoo in Loir-et-Cher was the first French fleet to present a couple of white lions in public
There is no tangible evidence of the existence of lions melanistic (black)