The world’s toughest lion broke an epic record. Australians were filming

In the dead of night, a lion mauled in a territorial brawl and limping thanks to a poacher’s trap that years earlier ripped off part of a leg, entered Kazinga Channel in Uganda and swam for more than a kilometre through waters defended by hippos and infested by crocodiles.

A thermal drone camera operated by a Queensland biologist’s research team hovered above. The researchers who captured the extraordinary crossing by the lion, named Jacob, alongside his brother, Tibu, have now reported it was the longest-ever swim by lions on record, smashing the previous distance of 300 metres.

The record-breaking swim is the latest instalment in the remarkable life of a three-legged lion called Jacob.Credit: Dr Alexander Braczkowski

The event not only contributes to the epic legacy of Jacob, a lion whom Griffith University’s Dr Alexander Braczkowski has studied for years; it’s also a key illustration of the extreme lengths the world’s remaining wild creatures are taking to survive.

“What you’re seeing here is a bigger symptom of the human-wildlife interface,” Braczkowski said.

“This is just another example of how animals, and specifically lions, are having to take riskier decisions to try to fulfil the basic tasks of just being alive, to feed and to find mates.”

Braczkowski’s team was tracking Jacob and Tibu through Queen Elizabeth National Park in January when the brothers were set upon by another pair of males. Two days later, they were attacked again and badly wounded by rivals.

The number of lions in the park has halved in five years. Competition for breeding rights is vicious. Driven to seek out females elsewhere and spooked from using a bridge further up the channel because it is frequented by humans, the brothers took the ultimate risk.

The pair stalked the shallows for an hour before attempting to cross. They made it 15 metres before scrambling back to shore.

They tried again and made it 80 metres before they suddenly split. The drone captured the thermal signature of something underwater, large and in pursuit: a hippo or crocodile, both easily capable of crushing a lion treading water.

On the third attempt, the brothers made the marathon 1.3-kilometre crossing. Braczkowski tries to maintain scientific objectivity. That was impossible in this case.

“I’m particularly attached to this lion because he’s been through every bloody gauntlet that you could throw at him,” he said.

In 2019, Jacob was caught in a snare, and a year later a poacher’s trap severed a hind leg. “Then his family gets poisoned, his pride gets split into two, and he gets gored by buffalo. His guts were hanging out of his stomach,” Braczkowski said.

A less-battered Jacob in 2017, when Braczkowski began studying him.Credit: Dr Alexander Braczkowski

“And now we see him do this swim ... If that’s not the most resilient lion that ever lived then I don’t bloody know what is.”

The survival of lion populations is bound to the economic fortunes of the people who live alongside them, Braczkowski said.

“If they lose just one cow [to a lion], that can literally mean their entire livelihood is wiped out,” he said. “We need to find better solutions that are good for both lions and people.”

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