Multi species pride

[caters]

One of my stories involves a pride with multiple species, 3 to be specific and to be even more specific those 3 species are cheetah, lion, and leopard.

It starts with a cheetah cub that spends more and more time with a nomadic lioness. As an adult, this 1 cheetah sets off to find a lion partner. Luckily the lion cub that will end up being his partner was recently born and he is already starting to make friends with other lions. Later on he makes friends with leopards and as an adult, the cheetah. The lion and cheetah then set off together to live for a few years until they start pursuing the goal of having a pride.

So I was wondering, what would the strengths be of having a cheetah, a lion, and a leopard together in a pride?

I mean, sure the cheetah could hunt when the lion and leopard are both too tired and could warn everybody of intruders(cheetahs have the best long distance vision of any cat), the lion could defend the cheetah and the leopard against intruders, and the leopard can hunt successfully in practically any terrain(and thus help when food is scarce) and pounce before the prey even has time to react, but besides those, are there any other strengths?

And given that so many things are covered here, are there any weaknesses?

 

[Danny McG]

I've always thought a lion would just laze around but then bully the others out the way when there's a fresh kill to eat.
Hence "the Lion's share"

 

[R.T James]

*as the person with multiple species in his story*

Reading this title made me think this was going to be a lovely discussion upon the implications of multiple species and the pride they each feel for their prospective species that could have led to a discussion on the cultural impacts of racism that naturally occur when one group views superiority for any reason which would have potentially evolved into numerous ideas of how you could use such things to reveal the world, drive the plot, and create a depth with a conflict that constantly parallels our world as well building up the characters themselves..

Not actual pride as in lion pride.

Umm even as the furry I have no input on that.

 

[Mouse]

My first thought was why would a cheetah grow up and go off to seek out a lion partner and not a cheetah partner, even if it was raised by lions. I'm guessing you're going for a fairly realistic story, judging by your main question, and that these are animals (Jungle Book stylee) and not humanoid cats.

Secondly, leopards tend to be solitary, so there's a weakness for you. Also, lions sometimes hunt and kill leopards.

Third, cheetahs are diurnal, leopards nocturnal and lions either/or/both.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Have you read Salar the Salmon or Tarka the Otter?

They’re quick reads which will help get you into the mind of an animal.

As Mouse says, what is the premise? Are they anthropomorphic? How much fantasy is in this?

pH

 

[Overread]

Lions are more nocturnal which is why documentaries of them have to spend ages watching lions sleep waiting for them to hunt during the day.

I would say the best approach to managing a group of random felines is to consider;

1) Reading up a lot on studies on them. Try to avoid the typical "lots of pictures few words" books as they can be visually impressive, but often rather if not very light on actual content and depth to their writing. You want more factual information in detail. Essentially you want more of an in-depth understanding of the felines in the real world sense which will help you massively in all the writing that you're aiming to undertake.

2) Hunt down a few biographies/studies by those who have lived with lions/other big cats. Lions are out there; cheetah should be easier (they've been kept as hunting cats), leopard might be more tricky. What you're getting from these is a different angle on the felines as well as their adapting to captive and different situations outside of their "wild norms".

3) Remember that in nearly every single book written about animals that there is often an angle from the writer based upon their interpretation of the creature and upon the nature of the book they are writing. You can run from a very realistic aim at being more a documentary style - say like Tarka the Otter (I've not read it though that's my impression of reviews of it) all the way through to things like the Lion King where its very evident that the animals have a lot of human properties.
Lionking is also a good example to note how the views of the writing can colour the views of the animal; hyenas get a very rough draw from the film and yet in the wild are far more on-par hunter wise with lions and as much as hyenas steal from lions; lions also steal from hyenas.


With the above you should be able to understand the wild real cats more so and from there the ways that they interact and how they would deal with each other depends how human/intelligent you choose to make them. If they are fully wild you're going to have to have some contrivances for such a group to form in the first place and, more so, to remain formed for any extended period of time. Abnormal groups are present in the wild, but they are rare and often only short term and a long term group might be more the result of previous captivity changing the behaviour patterns to start with.