The next few posts will focus on animals that we only saw in Manyeleti and not in Botswana (although some are found there – just not seen by us). These will be showing in order of the rarity of their sighting: leopard (one animal, one time), hyena (one animal each of two times), rhinoceros (multiple animals one time) and lion (multiple animals two times).
It is generally said that of the big five game animals (cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, rhino) the most rarely seen is the leopard. I’m told that the hyena – not a member of the big five – is nearly equally rare. (And remember that the big five is an artificial construct in photo safaris as discussed earlier; indeed it is arguably an artificial construct in any type of safari.) Thus we were very fortunate that we got to see not only a leopard (please note the use of the singular) and several hyenas.
Seeing only one leopard is not surprising. The leopard is primarily a solitary animal, only getting together with another leopard for purposes of mating. They are extremely fast, very strong, and very stealthy, often approaching silently to around 15 feet from its prey before attacking. They are carnivores and eat anything from insects and small birds on up to fairly large animals. However, they tend to avoid very large animals as prey. That said, they are the only natural predator of the adult chimpanzee and gorilla although this prey can fight back and cause serious injury.
The strength of the leopard is very useful when it has killed an animal as it usually brings it up into a tree and will feed on it there, generally safe from other animals. The mother will also bring her young up into a tree. So, finding a leopard requires looking both around and up.
All the above I know about leopards from reading, not from any direct experience. On safari we saw one leopard, midway on our first morning game drive, as it walked through the brush and across the “road” in front of our stopped vehicle. In many ways this was atypical for a leopard sighting. In fact, the only typical part of this sighting was that only one leopard was involved. The leopard walked through the field and across the road right in front of our vehicle (which was stopped and waiting as we had been positioned and alerted by another driver who had first spotted the leopard and spoke by radio with our driver. Normally leopards are skittish and avoid walking up to humans. The leopard was on the ground at a fairly late time (7:45 am) for this mainly nocturnal cat and not up in a tree either sleeping or eating.
There are 7 photos of the leopard in this posting (edited down from a much larger number as my camera was clicking more or less continuously from when we first saw it until the leopard disappeared). I found the leopard probably the most beautiful and elegant animal we saw in Africa. In the first picture the leopard is just coming into sight, and you can see how perfectly its coloring camouflages it.
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| Leopard Just Sighted |
The next series of shots show the animal walking through the brush, actually approaching us (but not tracking us).
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| Leopard Approaching - 1 |
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| Leopard Approaching - 2 |
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| Leopard Approaching - 3 |
As the leopard approaches a track in the brush, we can see it more clearly.
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| Leopard at Track in the Brush |
For a sense of how close the leopard came to us, in the photo below the shadow in the bottom left corner of the picture is of our vehicle.
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| How Close Leopard Was to Our Vehicle |
All too soon the leopard starts walking away from us.
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| Leopard Leaving Us |
Next up: Hyenas.
Amazing that this solitary, stealthy animal would come so close to your vehicle. Did the guide offer a reason for this (presumably) unusual behavior?
ReplyDeleteWe were all amazed that this happened. All I can think of (and this is based on nothing I especially know) is that we were stopped, motor off, and we were all obeying our guide's directions not to talk or move much. So we might not have raised its alarm system. And we could have been downwind. But otherwise, I share your wonder at this.
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