Lions live in social groups consisting of several adult females, their unweaned

Question

Lions live in social groups consisting of several adult females, their unweaned young, and one or a few adult males, unrelated to the adult females. When more than one adult male is present, the males are usually related to each other. When a new set of adult males take over the pride, they kill or force out the previously resident adult males and try to kill the unweaned cubs that are already present. The mothers of these cubs try to defend their young, but usually fail.

The behavior of a mother defending her cub against an infanticidal male could be considered an example of altruism. Viewed this way, in an evolutionary standpoint, explain who is potentially paying the cost, who is recieving benefit, and why mothers do not try harder to protect their cubs?

Explanation / Answer

The behavior of a mother defending her cub against an infanticidal male is one of the classical example of animal altruism.
In altruism, the act of one benefit the other at cost of the actor. In the above example the female defends for the cubs in order to protect them from the ferocious lion which is high of male hormone testosterone, and it will kill the cub of lioness which were born as a result of mating between lioness and other different lion. During this the lioness will be the loser as she may get injured and some time die due to the fight between her and lion. At the same time she may also lost all of the cub. But the intruder lion which is able to kill the cub will be on benefit, as he will be able to transfer his gene pool to the next generation of cub.
Many times lioness will not try hard/confront to save the cub because once the cub were killed, it will induce oestrus cycle (heat) in female, thus allowing female for mattings. And again, she can give birth to new ones in just few month.

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