This behavior mainly occurs with lion cubs (the youngsters, naturally), but it’s seen in adult lions too – in this case, it’s not always clear why. This mostly happens when the prey (usually an ungulate youngster) is brought alive by the lionesses to their cubs, so that the latter can hone their hunting skills – in the process, these cubs are too young to understand the art of hunting and the throttling bite that is essential to make a kill, so they instead resort to play with the animal by chasing it around and when they subdue it, they don’t immediately kill it, but rather lick it, possibly as a means to display youth innocence. Now, a lot of lions have seen to be licking prey they’ve just hunted, before killing and eating them.
#Lions eating prey skin
In the process, the feeding lion consumes the skin completely, and ensures itself that it never swallows (even accidentally!) small, pointy bones that could rip the cat’s throat, and that the meat is tenderized, which renders it efficiently digested. Moreover, these papillae have the feeling of a hairbrush, resulting in the tongue becoming a rough surface – they’re sort of like hairs because they’re made of keratin, which is the same protein a human’s hairs and fingernails are composed of.
Like all felines (including the domestic cat), the lion’s tongue is covered in small, hook-shaped growths called papillae, which point towards the back of the mouth, and are used as a brush to separate flesh from fur and bone, particularly when the cat is feeding on a humongous kill (wildebeests, buffaloes, zebras…) – in the case of smaller prey items (rabbits, rodents, birds…), the carcass is devoured whole, with only a few or no bone splinters left.
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