June 5, 2007
Awesome wildlife video: Battle at Kruger
Lamont found a Youtube video of this amazing three-way battle at a waterhole at South Africa's Kruger National Park:
I would rank this video awfully high on the list of wildlife videos I've ever seen. It's probably even more dramatic in some respects than a National Geographic video we saw once where an orca whale came up on a gravel beach in if memory serves Antarctica and grabbed a penguin and tossed it in the air.
This shows that the axiom that amateur digital photographers somewhat threaten the pros because they can capture so many images that some are bound to be good is also beginning to occur among amateur wildlife videographers.
It's probably more fun for readers of this blog to just take a look at this video first and then read the rest of my blog, because it will contain some ** spoilers.**
Our traveling party had the great good fortune to witness a lioness kill a hartebeest on a visit to the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. The account below is taken from my first book, 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet.
Would that I had camera footage of this hunt, but a verbal description will have to do. The hunt we observed was different from the one captured above in that a single lioness conducted the actual kill, she attacked a wildebeest rather than a much stronger water buffalo, and she quickly bought it down with a powerful paw swipe to the spine.
From my chapter: "Giraffes by the roadside: Kenya and Tanzania … and lessons on our love-hate relationship to Africa:"
From our vantage on the roof of the Land Rover, we could see only the flat tops of their heads and a bit of their haunches. From the lower angle of the wildebeest, the lionesses would have been invisible in the grass.Our guide, Mr. Jeffir, put the Land Rover into park and switched off the engine. Although our driver seemed for the most part disengaged and verging on somnolent, even he perked up for the drama about to unfold. Rembeaux, Carly, Jim, Steph and myself were electrified by the possibility, squeezed into the waning moments of our visit to Africa, of lionesses demonstrating how they killed their prey.
“I have been here 20 times, and never seen this,” said Mr. Jeffir, with relative vigor.
Foot by foot, for 30 minutes, the lionesses advanced. “Exactly how my cats stalk birds,” Jim said.
Lionesses, faster and more agile than lions (a fact women seem to love), can reach speeds of up to 35 mph. Still, they lack the upper range of speed of many of their prey, such as wildebeest, which can attain 50 mph. So the lioness must approach closely and lunge before its target can bolt.
We watched a wildebeest, heedless, walk calmly away from the larger group toward the hidden huntresses. “Uh oh,” I breathed.
The end game unfolded. The lead lioness tore toward the isolated wildebeest. A nearby hartebeest, terrified, bolted for its life. The panicked wildebeest ran two steps and made a desperate, tight U-turn.
The lioness, reversing field swiftly in reaction, caught up in two gallops to her prey and raised a mighty right leg toward its shaggy withers. The attacker, probably weighing 300 pounds, swept her huge right paw towards the wildebeest’s middle spine. In a display of might, she dug her spread claws into its back and pulled her giant foreleg to earth, bringing along the entire wildebeest. The victim toppled, its back crashing to the ground. Its four hooves flung once in the air and then fell. Resistance ended, and the animal lay still. The final chase had lasted perhaps 10 seconds.
We swung our cameras at the commotion in another direction. Just as the wildebeest met its end in front of us, two other lionesses behind our vehicle nearly felled a zebra. The herd stampeded, hundreds of hooves raising a reverberating thunder and a cloud of dust. Jim’s photos later revealed the surging head of a lioness above the haunch of the targeted zebra, who somehow barely escaped. Jim and I agreed that the family sheltie, Conan, would last perhaps five minutes out there.
Back at the downed wildebeest, eleven lions and cubs began to eat simultaneously. The killer stood quite near our Land Rover, perhaps three yards away, panting heavily like a struggling train engine. Long scars from past battles ran along her ribs. Too exhausted to eat, she shuffled wearily away.
As we photographed her and the feasting pride, another lioness from the failed zebra maneuver strolled up, unnoticed, inches away from our rear bumper. Had she wanted to jump up, she could have clawed us more easily than the slowest of wildebeest.
The exhausted huntress pants with fatigue near our safari vehicle in Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater after bringing down a wildebeest.
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:38 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
