Conservation status : Near Extinction Worldwide population: An estimated 32,000 wild Lions remain in all of Africa. Funfacts: * Only male Lions have manes, the impressive fringe of long hair that surrounds their heads. * Lions in West and Central Africa are considered critically threatened. At most, only a few thousand of the West African Lion still roam the wild. * West African Lions are thought to live off smaller prey than those in East Africa. * Based on recent genetic testing, Lions in West and Central Africa appear to be more closely related to Asiatic Lions than they are to East and Southern African Lions. * Lions are the most social of all wild cat species.