Sniptail is the name the park rangers and guides dubbed this handsome guy in Savuti National Park in Botswana. He's an adolescent male, really too old to still be part of the pride, but on this day he was fat and happy on an Eland kill with several females. His name comes from the fact that half his tail is missing, so his tentative place in the pride it appears wasn't easily won. At the time of year I visited Botswana, kills were plentiful and all the lions we saw were well fed and lazy, especially the males. I loved the chaos of his young mane and wanted to capture the look of contentment on his face. It was a challenge to get the coloring correct because he's a very dark lion, with a lot of black in his coat and red in his mane. It's a feature of most of the lions we saw on the trip, sexual selection among South African lionesses seems to favor the darker colored males over the lighter ones and no one knows why. Look close and you'll see Sniptail isn't quite alone in this picture.