The Secret Language of Lions: Decoding the King’s Roar

For nearly a century, the thunderous roar of MGM’s lion has conditioned us to think of the big cat’s vocalization as a single, powerful blast—a straightforward declaration of dominance and strength. But as new research published in the journal Ecology and Evolution reveals, the real communication system of African lions is far more nuanced and complex than this cinematic simplification suggests. The recent study, released on November 20, uncovers a previously overlooked acoustic landscape that may revolutionize how we understand and monitor these magnificent but threatened creatures.

Using sophisticated field recordings from various African locations and applying cutting-edge machine learning techniques, researchers have discovered that lion roars actually come in distinct varieties. While scientists have long recognized that a complete roaring bout has a structure—beginning with moans and concluding with grunts—they had previously treated the central roaring component as a single, uniform sound. The new research breaks significant ground by identifying two distinct types of roars: the familiar full-throated roar that anchors the vocalization sequence, and a previously unclassified “intermediary” roar that has different acoustic properties. The full-throated roar follows a distinctive pattern, rising in pitch before gradually falling, while the intermediary roar is shorter, lower-pitched, and lacks the elaborate acoustic structure of its more dramatic counterpart. What’s particularly fascinating is that the full-throated roar contains vocal signatures unique to each lion—essentially an acoustic fingerprint that distinguishes one individual from another.

This discovery carries profound implications for conservation efforts at a critical time when lion populations face severe threats across Africa. Jonathan Growcott, a conservation technologist and large carnivore biologist at the University of Exeter who led the research, explains that these acoustic signatures could transform how scientists monitor lion populations. “If you can identify a lion by its roar, this could potentially be a tool to count the number of individuals within a landscape,” Growcott notes. This non-invasive monitoring method could prove invaluable for tracking lion populations, particularly as these magnificent predators have disappeared from more than 90 percent of their historical range due to habitat loss and poaching. Traditional monitoring methods often require visual identification or physical capture and tagging—approaches that can be both challenging and stressful for the animals. Sound-based identification offers a less intrusive alternative that could provide more comprehensive data about population dynamics.

The technological achievement behind this discovery is equally impressive. The research team collected tens of thousands of hours of audio recordings from Tanzania’s Nyerere National Park and from acoustic collars fitted to lions in Zimbabwe. When they processed more than 3,000 calls through sophisticated pattern-recognition algorithms, the differences between roar types became apparent. By analyzing factors such as duration and pitch variation, they developed an algorithm capable of classifying each type of vocalization with remarkable precision—achieving over 91 percent accuracy in some lion populations. Perhaps most impressively, when focusing on the more informative full-throated roars, their AI system could identify individual lions with greater accuracy than human experts could achieve. According to Tanya Berger-Wolf, a computational ecologist at Ohio State University, this represents one of the first successful applications of machine learning to interpret mammalian vocalizations, expanding bioacoustic monitoring beyond birds, amphibians, and insects.

Despite these technological breakthroughs, significant questions remain about the communicative purpose of these different vocalizations. Growcott acknowledges this lingering mystery with a touch of humor: “We don’t know yet. Unfortunately, we don’t speak lion. There is no option of ‘lion’ on Duolingo.” The recordings, while extensive, lacked behavioral context that might have helped researchers understand why lions choose one roar type over another in different situations. Craig Packer, a renowned lion expert from the University of Minnesota, finds this an intriguing avenue for future research, suggesting that contextual recordings could reveal whether lions modify their roaring patterns based on specific circumstances. Do territorial disputes trigger different acoustic patterns than mating calls? Do lions communicate differently when hunting versus when socializing? These questions await further investigation.

As for the famous MGM lion whose roar has introduced countless films—it turns out Hollywood has been perpetuating its own form of acoustic misinformation. In a surprising twist that Growcott reveals, “The MGM lion is actually a tiger.” This bit of movie magic perfectly encapsulates how our cultural understanding of lion vocalizations has been shaped more by human imagination than by scientific observation. The gap between our popular conception of lion communication and the complex reality uncovered by this research reminds us how much we still have to learn about even the most iconic wildlife species. As scientists continue to decode the nuanced language of lions, we gain not only valuable conservation tools but also a deeper appreciation for the sophisticated communication systems that have evolved in these magnificent predators—a true king’s speech that’s far more elaborate than Hollywood ever imagined.