Research overview: manelessness and social behaviour inferred from cave lion art

This overview focuses on what Paleolithic depictions and frozen specimens suggest about whether male cave lions had manes and how the animals behaved socially. Cave art rarely shows the prominent mane characteristic of modern African male lions, leading many researchers to infer that Panthera spelaea was maneless or only lightly maned, perhaps an adaptation to cold climates or reflecting different social signalling. Some art panels showing several lions together have been read as evidence of cooperative hunting or group living. The survey reviews these interpretations, the limits of inferring behaviour and soft anatomy from stylized images, and how artistic clues combine with genetics and skeletal data. It frames the cave lion's appearance and sociality as questions where prehistoric art provides rare and valuable, if ambiguous, testimony.