It is often said in Hindi that “पानी में रहकर मगर से बैर नहीं करना चाहिए” loosely translated as one should not make an enemy of the crocodile while living in the water. But it seems the lions believed in the idiom “लव के लिए कुछ भी करेगा” Will do anything for love.
On a dark February night, two male lions stood in the shallows of the Kazinga Channel in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park, gazing across the water. Nearly a mile away lay the opposite shore, home to hippos and 16-foot crocodiles, with depths reaching up to 20 feet in some areas. Just 12 hours earlier, they had narrowly escaped with their lives after losing a fierce battle for territory. Staying on this side of the channel was perilous, and they could likely hear the distant roars of female lions.
Like many big cats, lions generally avoid swimming. One of these lions, known as Jacob to researchers, faced an even greater challenge—he had lost a leg in 2020 and now had only three. Despite this, Jacob and his brother, Tibu, were undeterred. They embarked on what researchers call the longest recorded swim ever taken by lions.
The first three attempts to cross the channel were tough. During their second attempt, the drone tracking them picked up a large thermal signature, possibly a crocodile or a hippo, causing the lions to split into a Y formation and hurry back to shore. Less than an hour later, they tried again for the third time. This time, the path seemed clear, and they kept going until they finally crossed the channel.
“It was pretty dramatic,” said Alexander Braczkowski, a conservation biologist who has been studying the lions since 2017.
Lions have been seen swimming in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, but they usually don’t go further than 150 feet. In 2012, a lion managed to swim about 330 feet across the Zambezi River, traveling from Zimbabwe to Zambia. More recently, in November 2023, a young male lion swam across the Rufiji River in Tanzania, covering as much as 985 feet of water.
