What does it mean to be a lion? I’m glad you asked that question because I am peculiarly suited to answering it. After all, I once lived on terms of intimacy with a pride of lions in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. In fact, on one occasion — unarmed and on foot with a single companion — I faced down the pride male in his fury by sheer force of personality. That’s all 100 per cent true, apart from the force of personality; anyone requiring the details at exhaustive length can refer to my novel of some years back, Rogue Lion Safaris.

It might come as a surprise though, to learn that a male lion in the full pomp of his power was willing to back down to a pale pedestrian with a bush hat and rather expensive binoculars. But lions are like that. Or they can be.

When we call a team Lions we are using them as emblems of noble and ferocious virtues, all wrapped up in giddy patriotism. A Lion is above all brave — brave as a lion, in fact. But the Lions of myth — which I shall differentiate from the lions of reality by a capital L — are not the same creatures at all as those that eat, defecate and copulate in the bush.

Let’s start with the backing down. A lion operates on cool survival logic, a Lion works on bravado and a sense of reputation. My lion was not interested in food — in fact, I had surprised him as he was sleeping off a prolonged and energetic session with a sexy lioness. He knew humans were at times dangerous. He simply wasn’t interested in confrontation; there was no percentage in it. (A Lion thinks very differently here.) He was neither cornered nor hungry. He was very angry, but not angry enough to make an issue of it. So he spun on his haunches and ran for cover, leaving me trembling.

A Lion is king: boss, ruler, the lord of the jungle. The Lions rugby team represent their sovereign, whose personal emblem is a lion. (The Irish have a different view of this, I know). But essentially the Lions rugby team go to former colonies to make symbolic statements about rulership and hegemony and so forth. This is what ignites the passions of the formerly ruled so effectively, this assumption of leonine arrogance, of the Lion’s right to rule wherever he sets his enormous paws.

But a male lion in his glory, with his mane and his massive size — he is a size-and-a-half bigger than any female — is no ruler. The serious decisions in the pride are made by the top females. The lion is not so much a warrior king as a perambulating sperm bank. (I am sure that there are rugby players who see themselves the same way).

Once a male lion has finished his long, hard and tough apprenticeship and acquired a pride of his own, he becomes a bit of a drone. The females do most of the hunting — a male, with his huge size and flamboyant mane, is ill-equipped for concealment. He is big enough and stroppy enough to take anything the females have killed for himself and he is generally unwilling to share, which isn’t so terribly noble. But he will often reveal a soppy streak by allowing a cub — small and fubsy, with too-big paws and gore all over its face — to steal his food with impunity.

We like to see Lions as essentially chivalrous beasts. But if any of the rugby players chose to emulate a lion, there is a set code of conduct should he meet a yummy mummy and feel compelled to intervene. He must kill the husband, obviously, but then he must kill the offspring as well. The grieving mother will at once come into oestrous and be available for the new boss. We are always talking about role models in sport and we have deliberately chosen lions as creatures with virtues we should emulate. Perhaps myth-makers should do more research.

The male lion is used to backing down, running away, letting females run the show when he is not acting the bully. He is not a ruler or a hunter, nor, save when severely pressed, a fighter. But there is one thing at which he excels and that is sex.

George Schaller, the great ethologist, in his brilliant The Serengeti Lion observed one male copulate 157 times in 55 hours. Presumably an ageing male feels bad when he can manage only 156. Lionesses are frequently eager and sensual partners, but prone to celebrating afterglow by handing out a faceful of claws.

Lions will give way to hyenas if they have to and will also, when the odds are on their side, have no scruples about savaging a kill from hyenas. It is clear that lions are not brave, noble rulers after all. So shall we call them cowards and cads and poltroons? Instead of being the emblem of all we admire, should we call them the opposite?

But that’s just making one more myth. Lions, in so far as they are moral, work to leonine rather than human morality, and they keep — or break — lions laws rather than people laws. Lions are wonderful and complex and, as I have earned the right to say, deeply terrifying beasts.

We humans love our myths. It is through them that we try to understand the world. We cherish our mythological Lions just as we need and ought to cherish real lions. And as for myths, let us see if the rugby team called the Lions can go out and make some. That’s what Lions are for.