Topeka’s Gender-Bending Lioness Grows a Mane

A female African lion named Zuri has raised eyebrows (and other bodily hair) at the Topeka Zoo & Conservation Center. For the past two years the 18-year-old has been growing a mane, just like a dude.

Zuri’s appearance began to get hairier after her mate, Avus, died in October 2020. With the old man gone, Zuri assumed more of a protector role of the zoo’s small pride, a behavior that instigated some hormonal changes and a more hirsute head and neck.

“She's a very dominant female,” Zuri’s curator, Hannah Simpson, told NPR. “She always has been. You know, she's kind of in charge. She's the more feisty one.”

Bearded lady lions are rare but not unprecedented. In 2015 Popular Science reported on the “five butch lionesses” at the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana. These girls (?) not only developed manes, one began to roar like a male and would try to mount the other females.

As for Zuri, Simpson says the old girl’s appearance is “nothing like a fully sexually mature male lion. She kind of has this, like, teenage vibe going on,” much like when human grandmas sprout chin hairs. “She's just not as pretty as she used to be,” says Simpson.  Problematic!

Photo credit: Evert Nelson / The Capital-Journal