If she is satisfied with their work, she does nothing in particular; she just joins the cubs in eating the prey after they have killed it. But if she is not satisfied with the way in which they have caught or killed the prey, she cuffs them with her paw!
Hunters have actually observed lionesses doing that! And of course the lion cubs practice their lessons more thoroughly the next time. In the jungle, the children of animals do not need to be punished more than once or twice!
You will notice that I have said nothing about the cubs' father, the lion. I am sorry to say that the lion is not usually so good a father as the tiger is. You will remember that the tiger helps his wife to provide food for the children, and also to teach them the tricks of the jungle. A lion seldom does that; he usually deserts his family, and lets them take care of themselves.
A lion that does stay with his family, after the cubs are born, has usually more than one wife. In that respect also the tiger is far finer than the lion. A tiger has only one wife; and he takes care of her and the cubs. But when a lion does stay with his family, the family usually consists of two or three lionesses, who are his wives, and their cubs.
In that case they hunt the prey in a pack; that is, the lion and the lionesses all hunt the prey together; and they are even helped by the older cubs. They need to hunt in a pack when the prey happens to be large, such as a buffalo or a giraffe. A lion by himself could seldom kill a buffalo or a giraffe.
Many a fight has been observed in the jungle between a lion and a buffalo—and almost every time the buffalo has succeeded in driving off the lion with its horns. Even if the lion managed to leap upon the buffalo from the back, he could not kill the buffalo by biting it on the neck because of the thick hair there.
And if the lion tried to stun the buffalo with a blow of his paw on the buffalo's head, the blow would not be enough, because of the thick hair which grows on the African buffalo's head. And meanwhile the buffalo would rear and buck, and throw off the lion. But if the lion has one or two lionesses to help him, they can all attack the buffalo at the same time, and pull it down and stun it with many blows.
On the other hand, as you will remember, in a fight between a single tiger and a single buffalo, the tiger always wins; he dodges the buffalo's horns, then seizes the buffalo by the throat from underneath. In that way he always kills the buffalo. It is only a herd of buffaloes that can beat a tiger, not just one buffalo.
A lion by himself is also unable to kill a giraffe in most cases; for if the giraffe sees the lion coming, it will kick out with its hind legs or its fore legs; and a kick from a giraffe has been known to disable a lion completely. So if a lion by himself wants to attack a giraffe, he must first stalk the giraffe stealthily, and then jump on it suddenly.
But as the lion cannot usually come near enough to do that, he generally attacks a giraffe with the help of one or two lionesses. For then they can all attack the giraffe from different sides; and as the giraffe cannot kick different ways at once, one of them is sure to jump upon the giraffe's back and bite it on the neck.