Lorkulup

Lorkulup was a male lion of Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve and one of the five Black Rock Boys, the brothers born in 2017 to the Black Rock Pride in the south of the reserve. He was the coalition’s family lion: patient with cubs, tolerant of other lions, and famous for something few lions do at all, bringing down adult buffalo on his own. A small hole in his upper jaw gave him a constantly runny nose, which is what his name is usually said to mean, and forced him to plunge his whole face into the water to drink. He wore a GPS collar for a documentary crew, which is why his fans in China called him Quan Quan, from the word for collar.

He grew up at the Black Rocks as one of nine cubs raised by three lionesses and was filmed from six weeks old for the series Brotherhood of Lions, where he is called the tag-along. With his brothers he left as a nomad at about two and in 2021 helped take the Rongai Pride. He paid for life near the reserve’s edge: in early 2023 he was speared by people and survived with a permanently disfigured lip, and in May 2024 he was treated by the KWS Mara vet team for a suspected venomous bite that left his head swollen and his breathing laboured. Each time he recovered and went back to hunting buffalo for his pride.

On the night of 25–26 January 2025, a year to the day after his brother Olobor was last seen, Lorkulup was found dead beside the carcass of an eland. The Kenya Wildlife Service and the reserve’s chief warden said he had been gored by the eland’s horn during the hunt and finished off by hyenas, and the death was confirmed on 1 February. Many guides, photographers and fans did not accept this: photographs showed his head cleanly severed and his body skinned, and they asked how a lion who killed buffalo alone could be killed by an eland. His death led to tribute billboards in London and New York, paid for by fans around the world.