Slit Lip

Slit Lip was one of the five Inselberg Males, the coalition that crossed from Tanzania’s Serengeti into Kenya’s Mara Triangle around 2018. He was instantly recognisable by his split upper lip, which may have been a birth defect, and by heavy battle scars. Unlike his brothers, he often spent long periods alone with the lionesses, and Angama’s guides frequently found him near the inselbergs that gave the coalition its name.

The Inselberg Males take their name from the inselbergs, isolated rocky hills near the Kenya–Tanzania border in the south of the Mara Triangle. The five are believed to have come from the Serengeti, where fans say they were first filmed in the Lamai area around 2017, and were first recorded on the Kenyan side by the Mara Predator Conservation Programme in 2018. By January 2020 all five held the south of the Triangle, ruling the Nasipa, Egyptian Goose and Purungat prides, among others.

In mid-2022 young rival coalitions began pushing into Inselberg territory: the six Nyati males, specialists in hunting buffalo, and three of the Bila Shaka males were both seen deep inside it. At the end of July 2022 Angama confirmed that Slit Lip was dead, caught alone by rival males. Most accounts blame the Nyati males, who lost one of their own in a clash with the Inselbergs; some fans suspected the Bila Shakas. He was the first of the five to die, at about eight or nine.