Leopard Predation Thread

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AlexE

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Joined: Jan 2018

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#234

03-09-2018, 04:31 PM

This happened a couple of years ago on a day trip to Pilanesberg. We saw a car stopped ahead waving us forward. At first all we saw was a wildebeest, and then realised something had it around the neck....a leopard taking down a fully grown wildebeest in the middle of the day, right next to the road, and only 2 cars there!!

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Another good evening yesterday at the main crossing in that there was a potentially good crossing of zebra at 5:00 p.m going from east to west, but it was stalled due to a crocodile attack on a mare and her foal.

She fought the crocodile off although suffered a broken leg. She crawled to the east bank into some rocks, A leopard who was in the croton thickets seized the opportunity and killed the zebra mare and started to eat. A few minutes later, three crocodile tried to seize the zebra carcass from the leopard.

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Then about five minutes later we saw her leap into the air, bounce once off the ground and jump on top of one of the adult female kudus. The kudu tried to turn around and run, but tripped over a small Kalahari apple leaf bush. The kudu fell to the ground with the female leopard securely attached to her throat. We re-positioned the vehicle and watched the female leopard suffocate the adult female kudu. It was incredible to see a +/- 35 kilogram (77 pound) female leopard take down an adult female kudu of +/- 170 kilograms (370 pounds)!

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This young male leopard killed a remarkably large warthog. After feeding on it in the day, as dusk approached, it desperately tried to find a good tree to drag the carcass in to protect it from hyenas. The carcass was too heavy and soon after it got dark the hyenas sniffed out the carcass and scavenged the warthog from the young inexperienced male leopard!

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We reported last month that the guides suspected that Slender, the resident female leopard around Kings Pool, might be nursing a cub. And as announced on the Wilderness Safaris Facebook page – she has not just one cub, BUT TWO! She first kept them in the hollow of a jackalberry tree, not far from camp. She then moved them further south into the thick mopane woodland for safety. She’s been seen hunting on a few occasions, including successfully taking down baboons – on one morning they witnessed her killing two! She was also seen sharing one of these baboon kills with a male leopard – a big but quite shy male, suspected to be the father of the two cubs. They should be about a month old by now.

Another female leopard, named the Calcrete Female, was also seen hunting – what a remarkable sighting it was! One of our guides, Moses, and his guests were lucky enough to see the entire kill – from her stalking a large troop of baboons, setting her eyes on a big male and starting the chase, and then finally killing him, dragging him quite a distance and then pulling him up into a tree – a performance of incredible strength, the size of the male baboon almost being the same as this female leopard!