A companion volume to the successful Big Cat Diary television series, which goes beyond the day-to-day footage and explores the bigger picture: history, biology, behaviour, conservation and how lions survive outside the Masai Mara. As well as a detailed examination of biology and behaviour, the book provides an historical perspective of the big cat families featured in the series. The book also looks outside the Masai Mara Game Reserve, to the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and the Ngorongoro Crater, and Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Finally there is the question of how to conserve our big cat populations. There could be as few as 15,000 lions left in Africa. How can we ensure they can maintain breeding populations, space to hunt and sufficient prey to survive?