The most familiar of all the wild big cats is the lion. The bodies of both sexes are sandy brown to reddish brown above and paler almost white on the underbelly and have no markings except their tails have a conspicuous darker tuft at the tip, and there are faint black bars on their ears. Cubs are typically marked with spots, but these disappear in the first year of life. The icon of the lion is the male with the shaggy dark mane. Lions from the northern and southern extremes of their range have manes which can extend partly along the back and underside of the body as in the Barbary and Cape lions who have very full manes and a fringe of hair on their bellies.
Females are without manes but have the same body coloration as males.
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