Lion in the context of "Leo (astrology)"

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion.

The monument was sculpted from the limestone bedrock of the Eocene-aged Mokattam Formation and faces east on the Giza Plateau, on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, the Sphinx is part of the Memphite Necropolis and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

An apex predator, also known as a top predator or superpredator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, without natural predators of its own.

Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning that they occupy the highest trophic levels. Food chains are often far shorter on land, usually limited to being secondary consumers – for example, wolves prey mostly upon large herbivores (primary consumers), which eat plants (primary producers). The apex predator concept is applied in wildlife management, conservation, and ecotourism.

The manticore or mantichore (Latin: mantichorās; reconstructed Old Persian: *martyahvārah; Modern Persian: مردخوار mardḫ(w)ār) is a legendary creature from ancient Persian mythology, similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in Western European medieval art as well. It has the face of a human, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion or a tail covered in venomous spines similar to porcupine quills. There are some accounts that the spines can be launched like arrows. It eats its victims whole, using its three rows of teeth, and leaves no bones behind.

The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (Ancient Greek: γρύψ, romanized: grýps; Classical Latin: gryps or grypus; Late and Medieval Latin: gryphes, grypho etc.; Old French: griffon) is a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle with its talons on the front legs.

Hathor (Ancient Egyptian: ḥwt-ḥr, lit. 'House of Horus', Ancient Greek: Ἁθώρ Hathōr, Coptic: ϩⲁⲑⲱⲣ, Meroitic: 𐦠𐦴𐦫𐦢‎ Atari) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both of whom were connected with kingship, and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra's feminine counterpart, and in this form, she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented beauty, music, dance, joy, love, sexuality, and maternal care, and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.

Hathor was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk. She could also be represented as a lioness, a cobra, or a sycomore tree.

Shisa (シーサー, shīsā) is a traditional Ryukyuan cultural artifact and decoration derived from Chinese guardian lions, often seen in similar pairs, resembling a cross between a lion and a dog, from Okinawan mythology. Shisa are wards, believed to protect from some evils. People place pairs of shisa on their rooftops or flanking the gates to their houses, with the left shisa traditionally having a closed mouth, the right one an open mouth. The open mouth shisa traditionally wards off evil spirits, and the closed mouth shisa keeps good spirits in.

The Minoan Genius is a legendary creature that was common in the Minoan art of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization in ancient Crete. It is portrayed sometimes with the head of a lion, or of a hippopotamus, or of other animals. It is mostly seen on Minoan seals, often in pairs as supporters of deities. It is also sometimes called a "demon", though it seems generally to be a benign figure in Minoan religion; the meaning is that of a daemon in later classical religions.

It is often portrayed with water vessels, such as ewers, so it seems to play a role as a libation bearer to deities.

Wildlife refers to undomesticated animals and uncultivated plant species which can exist in their natural habitat, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game, birds and mammals hunted for sport. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems, both wild and most developed urban areas, forming distinct groups. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human existence, most scientists agree that much wildlife is affected by humans. Some wildlife threaten human safety, health, property and quality of life, but many wild animals have value to humans, whether economic, educational, or sentimental.

Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways, including the legal, social and moral senses. Some animals, however, have adapted to suburban environments. This includes urban wildlife such as feral cats, dogs, mice, and rats. Some religions declare certain animals to be sacred, and in modern times, concern for the natural environment has provoked activists to protest against the exploitation of wildlife for human benefit or entertainment.

A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance. The concept was introduced in 1969 by the zoologist Robert T. Paine. Keystone species play a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community. Without keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether. Some keystone species, such as the wolf and lion, are also apex predators.

The role that a keystone species plays in its ecosystem is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone is under the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Similarly, an ecosystem may experience a dramatic shift if a keystone species is removed, even though that species was a small part of the ecosystem by measures of biomass or productivity.It became a popular concept in conservation biology, alongside flagship and umbrella species. Although the concept is valued as a descriptor for particularly strong inter-species interactions, and has allowed easier communication between ecologists and conservation policy-makers, it has been criticized for oversimplifying complex ecological systems.