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Litters consist of two or three cubs that weigh about 3 pounds each. Some mothers carefully nurture the young; others may neglect or abandon them, especially when food is scarce. Usually two or more females in a pride give birth about the same time. A lioness will permit cubs other than her own to suckle, sometimes enabling a neglected infant to survive. Capable hunters by 2 years of age, lions become fully grown between 5 and 6 years and normally live about 13 years. Lions have long been killed in rituals of bravery, as hunting trophies and for their medicinal and magical powers. Although lions are now protected in many parts of Africa, they were once considered to be stock-raiding vermin and were killed on sight. In some areas, livestock predation remains a severe trucktents problem. Early written records described the giraffe as "magnificent in appearance, bizarre in form, trucktents unique in gait, colossal in height and inoffensive in character." Lions are the laziest of the big cats. They usually spend 16 to 20 hours a day sleeping and resting, devoting trucktents the trucktents remaining hours to hunting, courting or protecting their territory. They keep in contact with one another by roaring loud enough to be heard up to five miles away. The pride usually remains intact until the males are challenged and successfully driven away or killed by other males, who then take over. Not all lions live in prides. At maturity, young males leave the units of their birth and spend several years as nomads before they become strong enough to take over a pride of their own. Some never stop wandering and continue to follow migrating herds; but the nomadic life is much more difficult, with little time for resting or reproducing. Within the pride, the territorial males are the fathers of all the cubs. When a lioness is in heat, a male will join her, staying with her constantly. This is your virtual window on Africa. You can select whether to have your desktop change on a daily, hourly or even near-real-time basis. It synchronizes your time zone with the cameras in Africa''s most active wildlife parks. You are guaranteed to see lions and other wildlife at least 5 times per day. The application is tiny, and does trucktents not affect the speed or efficiency of your machine - it updates your desktop wallpaper at the interval selected by you. The lion is said to be majestic, the leopard ferocious and shrewd. But elegant and graceful best describes the cheetah. The cheetah is smaller than the other two cats, but by far the fastest at speeds of 70 miles per hour it can run faster than all other animals. Now restricted to sub-Saharan Africa, wild cheetahs once were found in most of Africa, the plains of southern Asia, the Middle East and India.
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