Printable sheet
A lioness with three cubs naps in a rocky den, wrapped around her sleeping babies. Download the free PDF and enjoy coloring this tender family moment.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintA lioness lying with closed eyes, curling her paw and tail around three sleeping cubs inside a rocky hollow.
Use dark grays on the cave walls so the family seems to glow.
Write a short lullaby to help the three cubs sleep.
Lion cubs have bluish eyes at first, and these later turn amber.
A lioness with three cubs at her side spends a few weeks living very differently from her usual social routine. Shortly before giving birth, she slips away from the pride to find a quiet hiding place, such as a crack in the rocks, a ravine or a dense thicket.
Newborn cubs are helpless. They weigh only about three pounds, have spotted fur and can't see. Their eyes don't start to open for several days, and for quite a while they can barely walk. Life is mostly sleeping and nursing, pressed up against their mother's body.
A mother faces a hard choice during this time. She has to go hunting to feed herself and keep making milk, yet leaving means her babies are alone. Hyenas, leopards and other meat eaters are real dangers while she's gone, and so are fires and floods. Sadly, many cubs don't survive their first year.
This isolation doesn't last forever. When her cubs are around six to eight weeks old and able to follow her, the lioness introduces them to the group. For them, a whole new world of relatives opens up. For her, help from the other females finally arrives.
