The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations

Schaller's monograph is the foundational field study of lion ecology and one of the most thorough predator-prey investigations ever conducted. Over years in the Serengeti, he documented lion social structure, hunting behavior, hunting success rates by group size and prey type, kill rates, prey selection across the ungulate community, and the interplay with hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and wild dogs. The book quantified how cooperative hunting, prey vulnerability and competition shape lion diet and energetics, and it set methodological standards for direct observation of large-carnivore predation. Decades of subsequent work on prey preference, kleptoparasitism and intraguild competition build directly on the baseline patterns Schaller established.