An 11-year-old lion named Jacob, who lost a leg to a poacher's snare, has survived against odds by developing an innovative hunting strategy in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park. Instead of traditional lion pursuits, he ambushes prey like a leopard. Thermal drone footage has revealed how he targets forest hogs in dense thickets.
Jacob, an 11-year-old lion in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, lost his left hind leg in 2020 to a poacher’s snare and is also missing an eye after being gored by a water buffalo. Despite these injuries, he has only his brother Tibu for support, defying expectations that he would starve or scavenge. Conservation scientists, including Alexander Braczkowski at the Kyambura Lion Monitoring Project, were puzzled by his survival since tracking him in 2017.
Thermal drone footage captured at night shows Jacob adopting a leopard-like approach: he sets close-range ambushes in dense thickets and scrub forests, lying in wait to pounce or dig out prey. He targets 200-kg forest hogs, which lions typically do not hunt, making kills alone or with Tibu. “Jacob can’t sprint, so he doesn’t have a chance to chase prey,” Braczkowski says. “Because he’s targeting a very specific pig, it tells us he made a dietary shift. That’s also why he’s acting more like a leopard and taking big risks. But he has to – and it’s working.”
Braczkowski notes that losing limbs to snares is common for felines, as per Andrew Loveridge of Panthera. Craig Packer at the University of Minnesota suggests similar adaptations might occur in other lions, though Braczkowski counters that local lions focus on large game like antelopes and water buffalo. George Schaller, whose 1960s Serengeti studies pioneered predator-prey research, adds that lions sometimes behave like leopards but maintain distinct styles, and injured 'tripod lions' usually rely on prides.
Jacob has swum the crocodile-filled Kazinga Channel—1.5 kilometres, the longest recorded for lions—10 to 20 times in the past two years, averaging 1.73 kilometres daily movement, possibly for prey or mates. His strategy highlights resilience amid habitat loss and could aid conservation efforts. “Instead, he refuses to quit,” Braczkowski says, emphasizing Jacob's symbolic and genetic importance. Schaller calls lions “a species of fighters.”