Eclectic eater
A resourceful leopard steals a surprising meal
it was the morning of 22nd September last year that I had my once-in-a-lifetime wildlife encounter. I was on safari in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, when I saw something that even local field guides, who are in the bush daily, have never seen throughout their entire careers.
It all started with the sighting of a trio of three-week-old helpless lion cubs being nursed by their mother. Shortly thereafter, the lioness moved the cubs deeper into the bush for safety. Nothing strange in that.
The next morning, however, we were following a male leopard who was walking leisurely along a road for over an hour, when suddenly it stopped and stared intently into the bush. Our guide took up his binoculars, suspecting guinea fowl or spurfowl but – to our shock – whispered that the three lion cubs from the previous day were there, unattended.
The leopard slowly inched closer, then leapt in, bursting out seconds later with a lion cub in its maw. It sprinted down the road, cub squirming, and up a nearby tree in a roadside bend. The lion cub was held firmly in the leopard’s jaws for some time.
We looked on as the leopard devoured the entire cub, working its way down from head to tail. Though leopards’ wide-ranging diets include everything from ungulates to birds, this made for an unusual meal. Once finished, it leapt down from the tree, licked its own fur clean and slinked away.
We had expected the leopard to return to the bush and take the remaining two cubs, but the lioness came back to nurse them soon after the leopard had struck. We left the family to give them some time to ‘grieve’ in peace, returning later that day to find a large male lion sleeping in the vicinity (likely the father of the cubs) and the mother lioness on the edge of the bush nursing her cubs again, still visibly agitated. She was baring her teeth at us and waving her tail, so we decided to move on to avoid disturbing her, and in fear that she might charge our vehicle.
One week later, our guide contacted us to say that the lioness had lost a second cub to predation. A sad tale for the lions, a much-needed meal for the leopard, which must be a flexible eater for its survival, and a lesson for me in the harsh truths of nature, red in tooth and claw.
Have a wild tale to tell? Email a brief synopsis to catherine.smalley@immediate.co.uk