Quantifying the control laws governing terminal attack in lions.

Lion (Panthera leo) terminal attacks on a mechanized lure are governed by steering that combines proportional navigation and proportional pursuit, with speed constrained by a turn kinematic envelope that declines near close range.

• Why it matters: Real-time interception by terrestrial predators is hard to quantify because terminal guidance must translate noisy sensory inputs into steering and speed commands under biomechanical limits.
• What they did: The study reconstructed kinematics from drone videography using AI-based markerless pose estimation for 67 lion attacks on a lure programmed to move unpredictably.
• The result: The mixed guidance law matches a previously identified aerial pattern in Harris's hawks (Parabuteo unicinctus), enabling a quantitative framework to compare pursuit strategies across species.

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