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Hunting leopard surprised by cheetahs hunting, sighting at Kgalagadi NP, Nosob, Marie se draai waterhole


JPS

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Seeing an attack by a leopard is difficult, everyone knows, and seeing an attack by a cheetah is not easy either. 

But to see them both at the same time is really exceptional... 

That happened to us at the Kgalagadi NP Nosob camp, close to the Marie se draai waterhole in April 2022.  We had just returned from the Botswana section where we stayed for 5 nights, we had some good times but little view of the wildlife, mainly due to the very tall grass.  When we wanted to check in around 12.30 pm that was not possible so we decided to take a short drive to the southern part. At Marie's draai , we found a leopard near the road staring at an ostrich. Within a split second, she decided to go hunting the ostrich, or so I thought. She ran past the male ostrich toward a baby ostrich hidden in the grass, while the leopard ran toward the baby ostrich, the female ostrich ran the other way. The leopard killed the baby, and the male and female tried to impress the leopard by shaking their wings and stamping their feet. It seemed that the leopard was one with experiences, as she was not impressed at all with the ostriches.  Then it starts to get crazy, and the chaos starts..... 4 cheetahs ran at full speed to the female ostrich and they did not see the leopard with a kill, also the leopard did not notice the cheetahs when they finally saw each other everyone was confused about what to do. Soon after, two hyenas joined the story, the leopard decided to grab her prey and jumped into the nearest tree.  What an experience, every year Africa continues to surprise us with amazing sightings.  I hope you enjoy the videos we made and recorded some parts in slow motion, luckily, as everything goes so fast.

 

 

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Tom Kellie

~ @JPS:

 

Thank you for posting this sighting.

 

Seeing it is an education in what might happen when conditions are right.

 

      Tom K.

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Atravelynn

Crazy. It was a menagerie of chaos. Those 2 pm checkins were fortuitous for you.

When I was there in March, I kept noting how MANY baby ostriches there were--hundreds.  That bolstered the ostrich population and fed the predators.

Great sighting you captured.

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madaboutcheetah

Was it 4 young males, @JPS....... ??  I hope they found a meal later!!

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59 minutes ago, madaboutcheetah said:

Was it 4 young males, @JPS....... ??  I hope they found a meal later!!

Yes, I believe that these were indeed 4 males. At this moment it is a paradise for the predators in Kgalagadi as it had some good rains last two years. Spotting was hard due to tall grass but the amount of springbok, Oryx , gnu's was enormous.

So there were lots of hunts and kills....but to get it on camera is not easy as it all happens in a split second.

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Wow ! some crazy action - cheetah, jackals, hyenas, ostrich, leopard ! never seen something like that ever !

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What.... no lions!?:lol:

 

What an action, and predator packed, sequence

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