But, as I said, a few other animals besides felines are able to see in partial darkness. These other animals are also night feeders or night prowlers--such as the deer, the antelope, and the hyena.
Lastly, I ought to mention one special quality which all felines have--at least they possess it more than other animals. And that is the quality of _cleanliness_. You have noticed a cat licking itself to keep clean. A lion and all other felines do that. A lion even keeps his face clean. And as he cannot lick his own face, he uses his paws to clean it--just like an ordinary cat.
_How the Lion is Different from Other Cats_
I have told you the many qualities which the lion has like all other animals of the Cat Tribe. But can you see in what qualities the lion is _different_ from all other felines?
I shall tell you. First, the lion has a mane; that is, the male animal has; the lioness has no mane. _No other member of the Cat Tribe, male or female, has a mane._
Also, the tail of the lion has a _tuft_ of hair at the end; _no other animal of the Cat Tribe has the tuft_.
Moreover, the tail of the lion or lioness hangs straight out from the body; it is not naturally _curled_, like the tail of the ordinary cat or other feline. But of course the lion can curl his tail for a moment, if he wants to,--for instance, in order to whisk off a fly.
I shall now describe to you more fully these special qualities of the lion.
The lion's mane is composed of long, bushy hair. The hair grows all around his neck, and upon his shoulders. It begins to grow when he is three years old, and continues to grow till he is about five years old. A shorter growth of hair extends to the under part of the body of those lions that live in colder regions.
You may have read in your geography that in the interior of Africa there is a table-land, a part of which is about 6,000 feet high. There it is generally cold, and especially at night. So, to protect them from the cold, the lions that live there have a much thicker mane and more hair on the under part of their bodies than the lions that live in the hot lowlands nearer the sea.
When the lion lives in forest regions where there is plenty of vegetation, his mane is usually brown in color and much darker than his tawny yellow body. Why is that? Because the vegetation has both dark and yellow patches, and so the lion looks very much like his surroundings, and finds it easier to stalk his prey without being detected.