Lion pride lesson plan: why do some animals live in groups?

At a glance

1. Wonder (5 minutes)

Show the lion pride photo from why do lions live in prides? Ask: "Tigers, leopards and jaguars mostly live alone. Why might lions live together?" Record guesses on chart paper.

2. Read the evidence (10 minutes)

Read these kid friendly evidence cards aloud. Each one is based on research reported in our article.

1. Lion mothers keep their cubs together in a nursery group called a crèche. Groups of mothers can protect cubs from dangerous male lions.
2. Prides of lions defend their home area from other prides. Bigger groups usually win against smaller groups.
3. The lionesses in a pride are always close relatives: they are family.
4. Scientists expected group hunting to give every lion more food, but when food was scarce a lion hunting alone often did about as well as a big group.

3. Sort it (10 minutes)

In pairs, students sort the cards into "helps lions survive in a group" and "does not explain why lions live in groups". Card 4 is the surprise: it shows food is not the main reason. Discuss how scientists changed their minds when the data did not fit the first idea.

4. Argue (15 minutes)

Students write a claim with two pieces of evidence: "Living in a pride helps lions survive because ___ and ___." Sentence starters: "One piece of evidence is...", "This shows that...".

Share a few aloud. Then compare with other animals students know that live in groups, such as herds, flocks or schools of fish.

High school extension

Older students read the abstracts of Packer, Scheel and Pusey (1990) in The American Naturalist, Heinsohn and Packer (1995) in Science and Packer and colleagues (1991) in Nature (links in the sources below and on our research page), then complete worksheet 4. Ask them to separate correlation from cause: what would they need to measure to show that group size causes better cub survival?