Lion

Panthera leo

Does very little, loudly, surrounded by relatives.

Only 2.4% of people are Lions. (estimated)

If you're a Lion

You are social, confident, and extremely economical with effort. Lions rest around twenty hours a day and still get called the king; you have a similar arrangement with your reputation. You like a group, preferably one that is related to you, and you are at your best defending it. Starting things is other people's job. Finishing them is yours.

A lion's roar can be heard several kilometers away, and a pride's males use it mostly for announcing property lines rather than for hunting.

Find out if you're a Lion

The Lion as a spirit animal

You lead from the center rather than the front. You are brave in a way that matters when it is needed and dormant the rest of the time, which is most of the time. You are loyal to your group and openly unimpressed by anyone outside it. The flaw is that you let others do the work and then take the first bite. In fairness, that is the arrangement everyone agreed to.

Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.

How to get along with a Lion

Do

Give them the group; a lion on its own is just a large cat with worries.
Let them rest; the bursts of action are real and need the twenty hours.
Be clear who is in the pride; lions sort the world into inside and outside.

Don't

Don't challenge them in front of the group; the response is sized for the audience.
Don't expect them to chase; lions wait for things to come within range.

When it goes wrong: A lion under pressure gets louder before it gets physical; lower the stakes, not your gaze, and give it a dignified way out.

The Lion in a relationship

You love in company. Lions live in prides where the females stay for life and the males come and go, so you know the difference between the family you keep and the partners who pass through. When you commit, you are fiercely protective. Mostly you are asleep, warmly, nearby.

Engraving of a peacock, from Brehms Tierleben (1891)

Best matchPeacockA lion's mane and a peacock's train are both costly advertisements of condition; two animals that understand looking the part is the job.

Engraving of a hippopotamus, from Brehm's Life of Animals (1895)

Handle with careHippopotamusAdult hippos are one of the few things on the savanna that lions give way to, and the hippos know it.

Field notes

Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works

Sociability
Boldness
Energy
Curiosity
Devotion
Roaming

The lion is the only cat that lives in permanent social groups; a pride is a set of related females, their cubs and a coalition of males.
Lionesses do most of the hunting; the males' job is holding the territory against other males, which they do mostly by walking around it and roaring.
Lionesses in a pride nurse each other's cubs, and the cubs are often born within weeks of one another.

Lions in literature

The Cowardly Lion — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum (1900)
The Lion — Aesop's Fables (The Lion and the Mouse), Aesop (550 BCE)
Numa — Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)

Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.

Closest personalities

The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Lion's. If you got Lion, one of these was probably your runner-up.

Other mammals

Wolf Red Fox Brown Bear Polar Bear Tiger Leopard Cheetah Elephant Giraffe Hippopotamus Gorilla Orangutan Sloth Koala Kangaroo Platypus Otter Beaver Badger Raccoon Hedgehog Bat Camel Dolphin Sperm Whale

Among the 60

Brehms Tierleben, Alfred Brehm (1890). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits