Leo (constellation) Leo (constellation) Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac, lying between Cancer the crab to the west and Virgo the maiden to the east. Its name is Latin for lion, and to the ancient Greeks represented the Nemean Lion killed by the mythical Greek hero Heracles meaning 'Glory of Hera' (known to the ancient Romans as Hercules) as one of his twelve labors. Its symbol is (Unicode ♌). One of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, Leo remains one of the 88 modern constellations today, and one of the most easily recognizable due to its
Panthera leo leo developed for West and Central Africa. Results of a phylogeographic study indicate that lion populations in West and Central African range countries are genetically close to populations in India, forming a clade distinct from lion populations in Southern and East Africa. In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group subsumed lion populations to two subspecies, namely "P. l. leo" and "P. l. melanochaita". A lion from Constantine, Algeria was the type specimen for the specific name "Felis leo" used by Linnaeus in 1758. In the 19th and 20th centuries, several lion zoological specimens from Africa