I’ve happened to come across records of lions in Asia in passing, in my reading, a couple of times not too long ago.
There are historical references to lions in
So I looked it up. There is an extant population of wild lions near Goa in India. Not many.
There are plenty of Chinese statues of lions. And lion dances in China. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3047386/lunar-new-year-lions-arent-native-china-so-where-did So where did these come from? Were there really prehistoric lions in China? Or did the image of the lion travel east from India with Buddhism? I still don’t know the answer to that.
The following image is the historic and present distribution of lions in the world.
More on the Asiatic lion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_lion
The Asiatic lion is a Panthera leo leo population surviving today only in India. Since the turn of the 20th century, its range is restricted to the Indian state of Gujarat.
There were only 180 Asiatic lions left in 1974, increasing to 411 animals in 2010 and 523 individuals (including 213 cubs) by May 2015.
The Asiatic Lion Census conducted in 2017 found about 650 individuals. The increase from 1974 to 2010 followed an increase in wild native prey populations in the same region.
Scientists refer to the Asiatic lion as either Panthera leo leo or Panthera leo persica. The difference is moot because the north African ‘Barbary lion’ Panthera leo leo is otherwise extinct. (So is the North African Elephant, by the way).
The above image doesn’t show the Asiatic lion in Sri Lanka, but it used to live there, becoming extinct around 39,000 years ago.
The most recent wave of lion expansion out of Africa into Asia probably occurred only about 20,000 years ago.
There is an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_Lion_Reintroduction_Project
Proposed reintroduction sites in India. Pink spots indicate former populations, blue spots indicate proposed sites.
“The proposed reintroduction of Asiatic lions has been bitterly contested by the state government”. Gujarat state doesn’t want to lose its monopoly on lions. “In April 2013, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat state to send some of their Gir lions to Madhya Pradesh to establish a second population there. The court had given wildlife authorities six months to complete the transfer. The number of lions and which ones to be transported will be decided at a later date. As of now, the plan to shift lions to Kuno is in jeopardy, with Madhya Pradesh having apparently given up on acquiring lions from Gujarat.”
“As of October 2018, the lions were still in Gujarat, and 23 of them were found dead. 4 of them had died of canine distemper virus, which killed 1,000 East African lions in the Serengeti ecoregion.”
The evolutionary history of extinct and living lions
“Lions were once the most globally widespread mammal species, with distinct populations in Africa, Eurasia, and America.” Cave Lion fossils from Siberia and Alaska are most different to modern lions.
Asian lions are genetically distinct from those of east and South Africa, and seem to have descended from two waves of lions out of Africa, the first perhaps 118,0000 years ago and the second about 20,000 years ago.
