While gay lions have been found in nature before, sexual behaviour between two female lions is quite rare.

Guide Jason de Rauville however captured on video two lionesses trying to mount in Phinda Game Reserve and shared it with Latest Sightings.

“We were on our way out on an early morning game drive and came across some fresh lioness tracks. I was a tracker with one of the guides before becoming a guide myself,” De Rauville told Latest Sightings.

“We followed the tracks for a while and noticed that a lioness had sort of ‘scent marked’ against a tree so this stated that she must have been on heat. We followed the tracks further and met up with another guide who found two lionesses not far from where we were. We stopped at the sighting and watched them for a while.”

“I was very confused at first – I’ve seen dominance displayed by males toward each other similar to mating but never have I seen this behaviour in females. We saw one lioness mount the other and decided to stay and see if it would happen again. I was so excited because I had never heard of or seen anything like this before. The wait paid off and she mounted again, this time I had my camera ready!”

“They acted like a mating pair of lions and then lay down again. We left after the second round of mounting when they began to settle down and rest. It was the first time ever that I had seen this and after speaking to a lot of people, I realised that this is very, very rare. One of the lionesses are relatively young, she is also the much smaller one between the two – I’m not sure if that is maybe one of the influencing factors in what happened here.”

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