‘The Lion King’ Got It Backward. 6 Years of GPS Data Just Revealed Lions May Be the Villains in This Famous Rivalry

Jeremy Phillips
Wed, September 30, 2026
A-Z Animals.


Pair of adult Lions in zoological garden© ArtMediaFactory/Shutterstock.com

Key takeaways

GPS data from six years of tracking lions and hyenas in Namibia and Botswana revealed that hyenas tend to avoid lions, with 8 out of 10 tracked hyenas moving away from lions within 10 kilometers.

In The Lion King, the hyenas are the villains: sneaky, greedy, always creeping toward the lions' food. Real hyenas spend a lot of their time doing the opposite.

For six years, scientists in Namibia and Botswana fitted lions and spotted hyenas with GPS collars that logged where each animal was every five minutes. When they lined up the tracks of lions and hyenas moving near each other, one pattern showed up again and again. The hyenas were walking away from the lions, and the lions weren't walking away from them.

The rivalry we think we know

I grew up on that movie too, and it plants a pretty clear picture: hyenas as the thieves, lions as the noble ones defending their turf. Our own coverage of the real rivalry tells a different story. Hyenas tend to avoid lions, and lions often treat hyenas as pests they'll attack given the chance. Pop culture loves the idea of sneaky hyenas stealing a lion's kill, but in reality it usually runs the other way. The Ngorongoro Hyena Project, a team of biologists who study wild hyenas, says lions steal more food from hyenas than hyenas steal from lions, and there isn't much a hyena can do about it besides lying down and waiting for the lion to finish.

Lion vs. Hyena: The Similarities and Differences Between These African Predators

So if you could watch every step both animals took, day after day, who would actually be moving toward whom?

Six years of collars

This wasn't a researcher parked in a truck with binoculars. Seventeen lions and 14 spotted hyenas wore GPS collars that recorded a position every five minutes during their most active hours, and over six years, from 2013 to 2018, those collars sent back 349,163 positions. Picture a dot on the map every five minutes, for six straight years, whether or not a human was anywhere nearby to see it.

The study ran in two places: Etosha National Park in Namibia and the Chobe-Linyanti area in Botswana. Ten times, a lion and a hyena happened to have collars logging positions at the exact same five-minute moments, which let the researchers line up their movements step by step and see who was heading toward whom. The team says this kind of tracking can stand in for watching the animals directly, in places where following them on foot just isn't possible.

When Numbers Matter: 30 Hyenas Challenge a Male Lion
©Mark Sheridan-Johnson/Shutterstock.com

The hyenas kept leaving

Here's the part that would surprise anyone who grew up rooting against the hyenas: they were the ones with cold feet. Within 10 kilometers of a lion, 8 of the 10 tracked hyenas spent more of their steps moving away than toward it. Zoom in closer, to 5 kilometers, and all nine pairs with usable data showed the hyena retreating, every single one strongly enough that it wasn't just chance.

A hyena's odds of moving toward a lion were 0.461, a coin landing on "away" slightly more often than "toward". The researchers say that lean showed up no matter which of the three separate ways they checked the numbers.

One pair makes the whole pattern easy to picture. Lion OF-34309 and hyena SA-33872 had their collars logging at the same moments, and the two animals moved in opposite directions. The lion's toward-ratio was 0.687, a clear and significant approach. The hyena's was 0.299, just as clearly a retreat. Same two animals, same patch of ground, and one of them was closing the distance while the smaller of the two was opening it.

See What Happens When the King of the Jungle Gets Annoyed with a Group of Hyenas
©AfricaWildlife/Shutterstock.com

So were the lions the ones chasing?

Here's where the headline needs to get more specific, because the lions didn't behave as one group. Across the whole population, lions showed no consistent lean toward hyenas at all: the overall chance of a lion moving toward a hyena was 0.517, which sits right on the coin-flip line of 0.5. Only three of the ten pairs showed a significant approach by the lion.

But here's the sentence that matters most. The researchers write plainly: "If hyena activity were aversive to lions, we would expect lion movement relative to hyenas to be biased toward retreat in at least some dyads. We see none."

No lion in the study avoided a hyena, not one.

Inside the Fierce Rivalry Between Lions and Hyenas
©MintImages/Shutterstock.com

And the lions weren't all the same. Male lions leaned toward hyenas: across three male-lion pairs, the mean toward-ratio was 0.573, and all three male pairs came in above the coin-flip line. Female lions, meanwhile, sat at 0.486, which is basically a coin flip. The researchers had actually guessed this before they ran the numbers, predicting that male lions would track hyenas more consistently than females, which is part of why they take the pattern seriously even though it's small.

I'll be honest, two animals is a small number. The male-lion result rests on just two unique lions across those three pairs, and the difference between males and females wasn't statistically significant, meaning there weren't enough animals to be fully sure it isn't chance. And none of this tells us why. The collars record positions and times, not motives. "Villain" is the movie's word, not the scientists'. What the data shows is a lopsided rivalry: the hyena moves off, the lion holds its ground, and if that lion is male, it drifts a little closer.

Why nobody caught this before

This is the part I keep thinking about. Earlier studies that looked at whole landscapes, tracking which parts of a park each species used, found that spotted hyenas don't systematically avoid lions. From far away, that looks like the two species sharing the neighborhood without much fuss. Zoom in to a single afternoon, though, and the hyena in front of a lion is leaving. The fine-scale, step-by-step data caught something the landscape-level studies were never built to see.

Wild Dog Pack Miscalculates Attack On Lone Lioness
©A-Z Animals

That zoomed-in avoidance fits with other things we already know about hyenas adjusting around lions. Hyenas have been found to be more active in daylight in places where lions are present, likely to dodge competition. And hyenas only steal food from lions when they have the numbers to drive them off, rarely doing it when male lions are around, because the presence of a male lion is a significant deterrent to that kind of mobbing. That lines up neatly with the GPS finding: the one kind of lion hyenas are least willing to crowd is the same kind of lion the collars show drifting toward them. The researchers add that hyenas don't respond to lions with one fixed rule; individual hyenas are known to react differently depending on the situation.

The hyenas in the movie creep toward the lions, cackling and scheming. The hyenas wearing collars in Namibia and Botswana spent six years doing the opposite, keeping their distance from an animal that never once leaned away from them. It's sense, given who actually steals from whom. The scientists won't call anyone a villain, and this piece won't either: the collars record where each animal went, not what it wanted.

But if you had to point at who's leaning into this rivalry, the tracks point at the lions, and at the males most of all.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HYENAS

Spanish scientists find 15.9-million-year-old bear-dog species in Catalonia

Copyright Jesús Gamarra

By Jesús Maturana

Published on 04/07/2026 - EURONEWS

An international team has identified a new amphicyonid species, named Paludocyon moyasolai, from a skull found 30 years ago at Els Casots near Barcelona. The discovery, reported in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution, expands knowledge of these Miocene carnivores.

The skull was unearthed in the 1990s during one of the excavation campaigns at Els Casots, the site in the municipality of Subirats (Alt Penedès) that over time has become one of the key Miocene locations in Europe.

At the time, researchers assumed it belonged to an already known specimen of the genus Paludocyon, of which fragmentary remains had been found in the area and in other countries. With nothing new to investigate, the piece was put into storage.

It was not until 2014, in the course of a doctoral thesis, that someone took another look at that skull and realised something did not quite add up. The species it had been compared with was much more robust, roughly the size of a lion or tiger and with a weight close to 200 kilograms.

What they actually had in front of them seemed smaller and probably less muscular. The team at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont spent the last two years confirming their suspicion: it was not a known Paludocyon, but a species that no one had described before.

The newly identified species has been named Paludocyon moyasolai, in honour of the palaeontologist Salvador Moyà-Solà, and makes Els Casots the global reference site for this species.

Alongside the ICP, the study involved the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC), the University of Valencia, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Complutense University of Madrid, Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity and the Iziko museum in South Africa.

Skull and teeth recovered at Els Casots, Catalonia, Spain Journal of Mammalian Evolution

A medium-sized predator in a tropical lagoon

According to the researchers’ calculations, this amphicyonid, a member of an extinct group of carnivores that combined dog-like and bear-like traits without truly belonging to either, was about the size of a large dog and weighed between 50 and 70 kilograms.

The remains recovered include the skull, much of the dentition and a single isolated lower molar, enough material to reveal something that caught the team’s attention: the unusual development of the posterior molars, with a second upper molar that is especially broad and a third that is larger than usual for the genus.

That dentition points to a varied diet, consistent with a mesocarnivorous hunter capable of chasing small and medium-sized prey – primitive deer, bovids, ancestral pigs – without being the most powerful animal in its environment. In fact, the same site yielded a second, considerably larger amphicyonid species, roughly the size of a leopard, which has not yet been formally described.

The setting in which it lived around 15.9 million years ago was very different from today: a shallow lagoon surrounded by tropical forest, with crocodiles, snakes, fish and a striking diversity of mammals sharing the same space.

That aquatic environment, the excavation leaders point out, is precisely what allowed such good preservation of the fossils: after death, the bodies became trapped in the mud, which protected them from decomposition.

Reconstruction of the bear-dog discovered in Catalonia that lived 15.9 million years ago Recreación IA

Another piece in the map of Miocene carnivores

The find adds to a broader body of research on how communities of large carnivores were organised during the Miocene on the Iberian Peninsula. A previous study, involving Complutense University of Madrid, had already examined slightly more recent sites, Los Valles de Fuentidueña in Segovia and Cerro de los Batallones in Madrid, where an unusually high number of carnivore species lived side by side: bear-dogs, felids, hyenas and bears.

Using stable isotope analysis on more than 200 samples of tooth enamel, that study, published in Palaeontology, showed that competition between them was intense, except in cases such as the amphicyonid itself or the primitive hyena, which hunted different prey in more open habitats.

This kind of work with isotopes makes it possible to reconstruct with considerable precision what each animal ate while barely damaging the fossil: just a few milligrams of enamel need to be extracted with a dentist’s drill and analysed by mass spectrometry.

Carnivores from the Miocene period in the area Paper UCM

Applied to different sites and different moments of the Miocene, this approach is gradually building an increasingly detailed picture of how fauna responded to the environmental changes of the time – the shift from dense forests to more open, arid landscapes – and of the strategies that allowed some species to coexist despite such fierce competition for the same territory.

Paludocyon moyasolai fits into that story as one more piece of the puzzle, slightly earlier in time than the episodes studied at Fuentidueña or Batallones but belonging to the same amphicyonid family that dominated much of Eurasia and North America during the Cenozoic. Every new specimen described, researchers agree, helps to refine the group’s evolutionary tree and to better understand how it became completely extinct a few million years ago.

Forty new migratory species win international protection: UN body

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) (AFP) – The UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) on Sunday approved the listing of 40 new species for international protection, including the snowy owl featured in the Harry Potter saga.


Issued on: 30/03/2026 - RFI

The Hudsonian godwit is one of 40 species newly listed for international protection 

© Luke Seitz / Cornell Lab of Ornithology/AFP/File

The decision came at the conclusion of the COP15 summit on migratory species in Campo Verde, Brazil, which brought together representatives from 132 countries and the European Union.

It is one of the world's most important global meetings for wildlife conservation.

Also on the new list for protection along with the snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) are the Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica) -- a long-beaked shorebird threatened with extinction -- and the great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran).

The new list featured land mammals like the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) and other aquatic wildlife such as the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis).

The countries that are party to the CMS are legally obliged to protect species listed as at risk of extinction, conserve and restore their habitats, prevent obstacles to migration and cooperate with other range states.

Campo Verde is in Brazil's biodiversity-rich Pantanal wetlands, in the southern Amazon.

According to a report released ahead of the summit, nearly half (49 percent) of all species catalogued by the CMS are showing signs of declining numbers, and nearly one in four are threatened with extinction on a worldwide scale.

Another major UN assessment, published on Tuesday as the summit opened, warned that migratory freshwater fish populations crucial to river health and sustaining the livelihoods of millions of people are in freefall and risk collapse.

Habitat destruction, overfishing and water pollution from the Amazon to the Danube threaten the very survival of hundreds of species whose epic voyages along the world's great rivers go largely unnoticed.

Last November, Brazil hosted the COP30 climate summit in the Amazonian city of Belem.

© 2026 AFP

 

Amid new findings that more migratory species of animals are facing extinction nations gather in Brazil to agree on actions

Freshwater fishes, big cats, seabirds, sharks among many animals whose survival is at stake

Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS)

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The 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP15), a legally-binding UN treaty, will take place in Campo Grande Brazil March 23-29. With high-level political attention from host-country Brazil, the meeting is set to tackle an ambitious set of actions in addressing a vital aspect of the global biodiversity crisis.

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Credit: CMS

Campo Grande, Brazil — The 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) opens here today amid new reports that almost half (49%) of all CMS-listed species have decreasing population trends, and nearly one in four are threatened with extinction. 

The State of the World's Migratory Species: Interim Report (2026) paints a stark picture of animals under pressure from a combination of overexploitation, habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and invasive species. 

Over 2,000 participants are expected, including delegates from among the 133 countries that are Parties to the treaty, scientists, indigenous peoples and local communities, and conservation organizations. The meeting is taking place at the gateway to the Pantanal – the Earth's largest tropical wetland, increasingly under threat from drought, wildfire and land-use change. 

“It is a great honor for Brazil to host COP15. Holding this event in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, is a strategic choice. We are at the gateway to the Pantanal—the world’s largest tropical wetland. This region uniquely symbolizes the natural wealth of South America and the interdependence among countries whose fauna and flora cross borders. The Convention on Migratory Species reminds us of a simple yet powerful message: migration is natural.”

- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil

“Paraguay is convinced that protecting migratory species is not only an environmental task but also a development one. Ensuring the stability of natural systems guarantees the stability of our people, acknowledging the human right to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.” 

- President Santiago Peña of Paraguay 

High stakes

The UN wildlife conservation meeting carries particular resonance in Brazil, home to more biodiversity than any nation on Earth. On Sunday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil convened a High-Level Segment with President Santiago Peña Palacios of Paraguay, minister of foreign affairs of Bolivia, leadership of the United Nations Environment Programme, and the heads of the world's major biodiversity environmental agreements — the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), CITES, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands among them — signaling that migratory species have moved firmly onto the political agenda as part of global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss. 

What's on the table 

Across more than 100 agenda items, negotiators will grapple with threats that mirror the full breadth of the impacts of human activities on nature: illegal and unsustainable hunting or capturing of species, bycatch, habitat destruction and fragmentation, deep-sea mining, light, noise and chemical pollution, impacts from infrastructure, and the accelerating disruption of climate change.  

Negotiators will consider proposals to include 42 additional species under the treaty, including iconic animals such as the snowy owl, the great hammerhead shark and the striped hyena.  

What happens next 

Plenary and working group negotiations run through the week. Listing proposals, concerted actions, resolutions and decisions, which will shape conservation policy and species protections for years to come, will be considered for adoption on Sunday, 29 March 2026. 

Throughout the week, special events will include the unveiling of a major scientific study on migratory freshwater fish (Global Assessment of Migratory Freshwater Fishes), and the introduction of the Americas Flyways Atlas, a groundbreaking new online platform developed by CMS and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology highlighting vital corridors and stopover sites for migratory birds. 

A new CMS effort to address the serious threat of illegal and unsustainable taking – the Global Initiative on Taking of Migratory Species (GTI) will also be launched at COP15 to help governments, experts and local communities to ensure that any taking of migratory species is legal, sustainable and safe – and achieve their commitment under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The Initiative focuses on domestic use, which may pose a significantly greater risk than international trade.  

“The conservation of migratory species challenges humanity’s ability to cooperate in the face of a simple fact: life on Earth is interdependent. At this moment in history, this is not merely a scientific observation — it is an ethical and political imperative that demands responses commensurate with the multiple crises we face: climate, ecological, and global governance.”

- Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Brazil  

“The theme of COP15, ‘Connecting Nature to Sustain Life,’ has never been more important. Migratory animals — from elephants, big cats, raptors, freshwater fish, sea turtles, whales, waterbirds, and even butterflies — are not just wildlife spectacles. They are the planet's circulatory system, driving pollination, seed dispersal, carbon storage, pest control and nutrient cycling across entire continents. When their corridors break down, ecosystems follow.”

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme. “COP15 in Brazil – the world’s most biodiverse country – represents a significant milestone for advancing international collaboration on the conservation of migratory species and more broadly on reversing biodiversity loss. The 2024 State of the World’s Migratory Species report and the 2026 Interim Report provide invaluable information on the conservation status of migratory species, the major threats, and the actions needed to address such threats. The main drivers of declines remain unchanged - habitat loss, overexploitation, climate change, and pollution. We know what needs to be done, and Parties here in Campo Grande have the opportunity to adopt measures to ensure the long-term survival of migratory wildlife and healthy ecosystems for future generations,” 

- Amy Fraenkel, CMS Executive Secretary. 
 

At a glance: CMS and COP15  

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the governing body of CMS, which meets every 3 years to review progress, add new species under the Treaty, and strengthen actions to address conservation needs as well as continuing or emerging threats. Strong science underpins the COP’s agenda, ensuring that policy discussions reflect the best available evidence on threats, population trends and effective response measures.  

Venue: Bosque Expo, Campo Grande, Brazil (bosquedosipes.com/bosque-expo)  

Dates: Monday 23 March to Sunday 29 March 2026    

COP15 media accreditation: https://bit.ly/cms-cop15-media-registration  

COP15 media briefing (Thurs. 5 March): recording at https://bit.ly/3MSEhf6   

COP15 primer: Key issues and events -- what’s on the table, what to expect: https://conta.cc/4aK8t3K 

COP15 opening press conference  

Monday, March 23, 2026,

COP15 venue in Campo Grande.  

1:45 pm AMT/ EDT (5:45 pm GMT)  

The event will be livestreamed via the CMS Youtube Channel COP15 Playlist and will feature the presentation of the State of the World’s Migratory Species: Interim Report 2026.  

Key speakers:  

Marina Silva, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Brazil;  

João Paulo Capobianco, Chair of COP15 and Executive Secretary, Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (Brazil);  

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Assistant UN Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director, UN Environment Programme;  

Amy Fraenkel, Executive Secretary, Convention on Migratory Species;  

Kelly Malsch, Head of Nature Conserved, UNEP-WCMC, and lead author of the State of the World’s Migratory Species: Interim Report (2026).  

The press conference will provide an overview of the week’s agenda, major scientific findings, and anticipated negotiations and outcomes.  

On the evening of 23 March, the Migratory Species Champion Night will recognize CMS Parties for outstanding contributions to protecting wildlife on the move. 

Resources  

• CMS COP15 Press Page  

• CMS COP15 Information Hub  

• CMS Appendix I and II in English, Spanish and French  

• Images and footage for media  

• Freshwater fish photos: https://bit.ly/freshwater-fish-photo-assets   

• Video:  https://bit.ly/freshwater-fish-video-assets  

Background 

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals is a legally binding international treaty under the United Nations. CMS is one of the most important global frameworks for wildlife conservation and plays a vital role in addressing the global biodiversity crisis.   

By fostering international collaboration, supporting research, and developing conservation agreements and actions among the Range States in which these species are found, CMS ensures the long-term survival of migratory species of wild animals and their habitats, and the vital benefits they provide.  

132 countries plus the European Union are Parties to CMS. In addition, several non-Party countries have signed one or more binding CMS Agreements to protect migratory species.   

CMS Appendices I and II 

CMS Appendix I comprises migratory species in danger of extinction in the wild throughout all or a significant portion of their range. Parties that are Range States to a migratory species listed on Appendix I endeavour to strictly protect them by prohibiting the taking of such species (including the deliberate killing, capture or disturbance), with a very restricted scope for exceptions; conserving and, where appropriate, restoring their habitats; preventing, removing or mitigating obstacles to their migration; and controlling other factors that might endanger them.  

Appendix II migratory species require international agreement for their conservation and management. It also includes species whose conservation status would significantly benefit from the international cooperation that could be achieved by an international agreement. This can include setting common objectives and management measures for shared populations, preparing and implementing joint action plans, coordinating monitoring and research, sharing data and best practices, and working together to conserve and restore key habitats along the species’ migration routes. The aim is to ensure that protection and management efforts are aligned across borders so that conservation gains in one country are not lost in another.  

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Can science and society align to save biodiversity? Alternet Summer School participants will set out to investigate

Organised by Alternet in cooperation with Biodiversa+, the 2026 edition is titled “Biodiversity and society: transforming science and policy.”

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The Alternet Summer School aims to support the next generation of scientists and practitioners in developing integrative approaches to complex environmental challenges.

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Credit: Tyler Kulfan, Alternet

The Alternet Summer School will return from 19–29 August 2026 in the mountain village of Peyresq, France, bringing together PhD candidates, early career researchers, and professionals to examine one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the relationship between biodiversity and society.

Organised in cooperation with Biodiversa+, the 2026 edition is titled “Biodiversity and society: transforming science and policy.” The programme is designed to foster transdisciplinary dialogue at the interface of ecological science, social science, and policy-making. Set in the remote and historically preserved mountaintop town of Peyresq, the Summer School provides an immersive environment for critical reflection, collaborative learning, and intellectual exchange.

Global biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rates, with profound consequences for ecosystems and human well-being. Against this backdrop, the Summer School addresses biodiversity management and conservation through a systemic lens, focusing on the drivers of biodiversity loss and the integration of ecological knowledge with social science approaches. Participants will engage with socio-ecological systems thinking and explore pathways for transformative change in multifunctional landscapes, where competing values and stakeholder interests must be reconciled.

The programme combines lectures with interactive formats, including field trips, collaborative group projects, and participant-led discussions. A defining feature of the Summer School is the integration of participants’ own research topics into the learning process, creating a reflexive and co-creative academic setting.

“At the Alternet Summer School, it’s amazing to see the change in the students even during their stay,” notes former participant and now convener Dr. Marie Vandewalle. “They begin questioning their work and their teachers. And they ask really deep questions, which they would never dare to ask at a conference.  It is because the Summer School provides a safe environment where students and mentors can be themselves, with their emotions, doubts, struggles, and insecurities. 

The Alternet Summer School is an annual initiative of Alternet, a European network of research institutions focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services. It aims to support the next generation of scientists and practitioners in developing integrative approaches to complex environmental challenges.

The Alternet Summer School is an annual initiative of Alternet, a European network of research institutions focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services. It aims to support the next generation of scientists and practitioners in developing integrative approaches to complex environmental challenges. The first edition was back in 2006. Each year, approximately 30 students from every corner of Europe and the world participate.

Martin Sharman, a recurrent speaker at the event, describes the Summer School as “a modern-day School of Aristotle, where lecturers learn as much as students - if not more.”

Applications for the Alternet Summer School 2026 are open from 10 March to 20 April 2026 at alterneteurope.eu