Fareham_Bee

Anyone seen this? Fabulous stuff from Kruger National Park, a bit distressing in places for animal lovers but what a result if you stick with it. The ranger can be heard saying "I've never seen anything like that before in my life"

Lions. Kings of the jungle? Maybe not any longer!

YouTube - Battle at Kruger

Steve Crook

The ranger must be new at his job
The lionesses weren't very good at theirs, they didn't kill the calf properly. They might be quite young and inexperienced.

That's one lucky calf, to survive not only the lionesses but the croc as well.

Interesting, but nothing really all that surprising.

Steve

christoph404

The clip was shown on the national TV news with a report that it has been viewed around the globe by about 10 million people so far, I wonder if the person who filmed it is making any dosh out of it! I think Lions are a bit like domestic cats in that they like to play with their prey before killing it, but that calf looked liked it limped off back to the safety of the herd, I would imagine with a crocodile hanging on to your rear leg and a pride of lions chewing at your neck you would sustain some serious injuries! I wonder if the calf did survive after all that trauma? The other side of the story is that those poor lions went hungry for goodness knows how long after being denied their dinner!

Steve Crook

Lions, like all predators, are used to going hungry. A predator will usually only kill in 1 in 10 or even 1 in 50 attempts. For big cats there may be many days between kills.
They weren't chewing the calf's throat, or it would indeed be dead. Big cats bite the windpipe to suffocate the prey. They didn't do that very well. Or with smaller prey items they bite to the back of the neck to sever the spine.
I thought that the croc had taken a leg and the lions let it get away with that. I also thought I saw another of the lions taking a chunk out of the calf's rump. That's quite common, to start eating the prey while it's still alive.

Nature red in tooth and claw

Steve