After spending a week in Tanzania, I still love lions, but they challenge my sense of morality. (Anthropomorphizing, as usual)
Here’s an old guy lumbering along. (Jackie’s video)
I really enjoyed watching two adolescent lions crossing a stream with their mother. I’m putting up so many pictures because they show so much personality. The mother led the way, had a drink and crossed the stream. The young ones followed until they got to the muddy stream bed and balked! It seemed as though they were comforting each other before heading into the muck. They clearly didn’t like getting their feet muddy.
Later in the day we came upon a lion pride high up on an outcropping of rocks. It was so iconic but especially nice when the sun came out!
These encounters were all lovely but the next one was harrowing! We passed a male and female lion wandering through the tall grass together. At one point they came very close to the jeep, as you can see.
About a 1/2 mile away, there were several safari jeeps watching a female cheetah with two cubs. We stopped on the other side of them, rather far away. I could barely make out either cub although I could see there were 3 animals there. Suddenly the two lions came loping along at a quick pace, clearly coming for the cheetahs. This was something I really didn’t want to see! For the moment I even put my camera down and closed my eyes. But then the most amazing thing took place. The cheetahs took off – the cubs into the tall grass, as far as we could see, and the mother running back and forth in different directions to confuse the lions and lure them away from the cubs. The lions were now running at a gallop but there was no way they were going to catch the mother cheetah.. Meanwhile the drivers got into gear (so to speak) in their effort to separate the lions from the cheetahs. Our guide, Adam, called to the others on the intercom system directing them to head off the female here and the male there. After a few minutes, the cheetah was quite far away (you can barely see her in the 4th to the last picture) and the lions headed off in the other direction and lay down to rest.
What you don’t see in these photos is the speed everything happened and the dust that the jeeps raised. I de-hazed most of the pictures but left others so you could see how the entire scene was filled with dust.
We all left but I have to wonder if the cubs survived till the next day. It is interesting that the guides are trained now to help save cheetah cubs. The species is endangered with only 6-8% surviving to adulthood, to a great extent because of lion and leopard kills.
This did leave me with a bad feeling about lions, although I know they have to eat, but really – a cheetah cub? Hardly any meat to speak of. Go find an old gazelle, of which there are so many!