European Cave Lion

The **European Cave Lion** appeared in 2018 videogame called *Kemono Friends Pavilion*. The European Cave Lion is a type of Friend first mentioned by Kemono Friends Project Twitter in 2017 and later featured in Kemono Friends Pavilion.

She has short bluish gray hair with the sides fading into white. Her front hair has dark grayish blue stripes with white marks underneath. There is also an "ahoge", a strip of hair sticking out of the top of the head like other Lion Friends. She has blue eyes lacking any highlight, indicating her original form being an extinct species. She wears a blue checkered tie, a white striped, sleeveless ruffle shirt plus a stripy corset with black suspenders; striped arm sleeves on both arms and a pair of black gloves. She has a big striped white bow on her back and white leggings with three dark stripes near the thighs. She has white boots with a fluffy collars and black soles.

European Cave lion, also known as Eurasian Cave lion or Cave lion, is an extinct *Panthera* species evolved in Europe less than 600,00 years ago. It went extinct about 13,000 years ago. It shares a common ancestor with but is genetically isolated from modern lions.

The species is known from Paleolithic cave paintings, ivory carvings, and clay figures. A drawing in France's Chauvet cave, estimated to be 30,000 years old, depicts two European Cave lions walking together. The one in the foreground is slightly smaller than the one in the background, which has been drawn with a scrotum and without a mane. This suggests male European Cave lions lacked manes or had very small manes.

The skeleton of an adult male found in 1995 near Siegdorf, Germany had a shoulder height of around 1.2 m, a head to body length to body length of 2.1 m without the tail, and weighs between 320 to 360 kg. European Cave lions is similar in size with large modern lions. There are other bigger species; a male reaches 2.5m (8.2 ft) in length without tail. The species is characterized by its large size, rounded, protruding ears, tufted tail, and perhaps faint, tiger-like stripes

In 2016, hair found near Maly Anyuy River was identified as European Cave lion hair was probably similar in color as that of the modern lion, though slightly lighter. In addition, the European Cave lion is thought to have had a very thick and dense undercoat comprising closed and compressed yellowish-to-white wary downy hair with a smaller mass of darker colored guard hairs, possibly an adaptation to the ice age climate.

They formed a contiguous population from Europe to Alaska over the Bering land bridge. European Cave lions inhabited open environment like Mammoth steppe, boreal forest, woodlands and mountains of Eurasia. They are widely distributed from the Iberian peninsula, southeast Europe, Great Britain, Central Europe, the East European Plain, and across most of northern Eurasian to Canada and Alaska.

Large amount of bones belonging to European Cave lion were excavated in caves, where bones of cave hyena, cave bear, and Paleolithic artifacts were also found. It was most likely a solitary animal. Isotopic analysis of bone collagen samples extracted from fossils indicate that Cave Bear, Reindeer, young mammoth, bison, and other cervids were prominent in the diet of European Cave lions.