 Lions harass lioness: Video
from Wildcast - African bush adventures live-blogged to a screen near you
June 16, 2008
The lions were lazying in the same place I’d left them. But as I arrived this giraffe was making its way directly towards the lions. By now they had all gone low into their crouched positions. About 20m away the giraffe stopped to feed and then suddenly saw the lions and took off. The lions didn’t pursue. Instead, the males were back to their old tactics trying to mount Manyari and almost seeming to be taking turns, although not leaving any time between mountings. Manyari has only mated properly once this time. So is she coming into oestrus? Is she just doing this to appease the boys. Of course it will help strengthen social bonds in this new pride. For the first time in many weeks it was great to have the pride out there hunting as a pride, the boys thinking about hunting most of the time, instead of competing for a spot next to Manyari. They headed north all night straight into the heart of the Nduna pride’s territory, even marking on their way. Surely they’re not hoping to extend their territory all this way? They made several attempts on giraffe, as this was the only prey species they came across all night. Before dawn they settled down and a lion roared to the north of them. This was probably Nduna. The other 4 responded with a mighty roar and then lay down on the spot, waiting. Nobody came. But at dawn Nduna was roaring again and seemed to be coming closer. The pride never roared back and headed south at a brisk pace. After a kilometre they settled down and listened as Nduna’s roars got closer. But he never got to them and I left the pride resting but only after getting some of those great low down, low angle photos. Of course Magwaza was rather keen on me. I’ve decided to name Manyari’s pride the Nyari Pride. Nyari meaning buffalo as they’re good buffalo hunters. It’s also the name of a pan in the heart of their territory. adventure, africa, african, animal, animal kingdom, animals, blog, blogumentary, conservation, documentary, ecotraining, education, experience, flickr, giraffe, GLTP, gonarezhou, Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, hunting, lion, lions, malilangwe, manyari, mashable, mating, narrowcasting, nature, night, Open Content Alliance, pamushana, peace parks, photo, photos, podcasting, predators, teach, video, waterhole, wildcast, wildcasting, wilderness, wildlife, wildlife documentary, youtube, zimbabwe
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