All my 50 or so years of life, I never questioned the concept of the African lion as king of the jungle. Today, watching a nature show, I suddenly realized that I have never seen a video or film of a lion in the jungle. They hunt on the savanah.Does anyone know the origin or who first coined the phrase?
Well, I don’t know about “king of the jungle”–lions don’t actually live in jungles–but the lion as “king of the beasts” goes back to Aesop’s Fables.
I read a short skit about this.
“Why are Lions King of the Forest? They don’t live in forests.”
“No, Lions are kings of the Jungle!”
“Nope, Tarzan is King of the Jungle.”
“I thought he was Lord of the Jungle…”
there’s no punchline, I’ve just always remembered it…
Minor nitpick/hijack. Asiatic lions have been observed in raiforest. It’s just very, very rare.
I suspect that the origin of the phrase lies somewhere in the confusion, by whomever originated the term, as to what a jungle really is. Jungles are tropical forests with dense undergrowth. However, many people equate them to rainforests (which, frequently, have little in the way of undergrowth as a result of massive tree canopies). I suppose that if African lions were more prone to frequent rainforests at some time in the past (as Gaspode mentioned, the Asiatic ones apparently do so, albeit rarely, today), and folks equated “rainforest” with “jungle”, the association might not have seemed out of place.
Then again, the phrase could also be based in a misconception that all of Africa was, at one time (from what I gather) thought to be a dark, mysterious jungle-y place. If Africa is a big jungle, lions live in Africa, and lions are the “king of beasts”, then they must be “kings of the jungle”, too! Yeah, that’s it!